Primeval Series 6, Episode 6 - Shadow of a Man
by qjay
Summary: A vicious attack by a group of Deinonychus leaves a member of the team on the brink of death, and the rest hunting a traitor, in this sixth story in my theoretical sixth series.
1. Teaser

**Primeval 6.6 **("Shadow of a Man")

by qjay

___DISCLAIMER: Primeval was created by Adrian Hodges and Tim Haines. It does not belong to me. This is not-for-profit fan fiction, and no infringement is intended._

_AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story was originally written in script format; I'm converting it to prose as I continue writing my own version of a sixth series for the UK Primeval. I haven't seen the New World spin-off yet, so these stories may contradict it. Also, I'm not British. Please excuse any slang or terminology that would not be used in the UK._

_Oh, and MANY THANKS to those of you who've been sticking with this series and leaving reviews. I really appreciate your support and encouragement._

* * *

**Previously on Primeval, Series 6:**

One year after Series 5, Matt Anderson's future double has been appearing to members of the ARC team. He revealed to Abby Maitland that he's stuck in a time loop, and has seen the team's destruction play out a million times. He's manipulating the team to bring about the one future he believes won't end in disaster. Because of his warnings, Abby's husband, Connor Temple, believes he is destined to die, and has been taking precautions by building a variety of time-travel devices for the future Matt's use. He's hiding all this from Abby, who knows about Matt's prediction but is determined to thwart it.

Meanwhile, Captain Becker and Jess Parker have begun a new relationship, despite the future Matt's warnings that Jess in particular would regret this course of action. After a rocky and tentative start, they recently spent the night together for the first time.

But grave danger lies with a shadowy organization the team discovered experimenting on anomalies: an enemy whose reach extends from a top-secret lab in a British town called Southfield, at least as far as Danny Quinn's new anomaly-hunting operation on the American West Coast. Unknown to Danny, that installation's director is a top member of the conspiracy.

Having failed to kill Connor and Abby in America, the Director has issued an order to veteran mercenary Christopher Newman to strike at the heart of the ARC itself. Newman, who seems to have some temporal connection to the ARC's founder, Nick Cutter, has grown to sympathise with the team, but now must decide whether to betray them or risk being erased from history...

* * *

**Teaser**

Deep below the city of London, in the nearly-forgotten network of sewer tunnels, a young man named Charlie navigated a maze of pipes almost by instinct. Tall and brawny and clever in his way, but not formally educated, he'd been a blue-collar worker all his life, and had worked in the sewer for several years. It was all second nature to him by now.

Ahead of him in the dim light, he could barely make out a knot of men very much like him: his co-workers, who clustered around a junction of several pipes, shining their torches and generally looking vexed.

Charlie sighed. He never liked to start a weekday morning out with _vexed_. He waved to the others as he approached. The newer men looked up to him, and he knew it. Nobody down here knew the work as well as he did. That wasn't arrogance; in some ways it was a burden, because they were usually happy to leave the hardest jobs for him. But everyone had to be good at something...

"There he is!" said his boss, a grizzled older fellow named Tom; he was even more experienced than Charlie and a good bloke, if not quite as clever. "Morning, Charlie!"

"Morning, Tom. Morning, lads. What seems to be the trouble?"

Tom rolled his eyes. "What doesn't? For one thing, you wouldn't believe how many no-shows we've got. Half the shift's gone missing."

"Typical," Charlie grunted. "Think they're after a raise? Can't say I'd blame them."

Tom nodded, expressing the universal dislike of the little fellow for the bigger fellows. "You know how it is. We're invisible down here 'till it starts to back up. Then-"

All the workers laughed at that. Charlie accepted a torch from one of them, and knelt beside the pipe they were replacing. "So, what's the trouble?"

"See for yourself," said Tom. "The main pipe burst and caused a massive spill. We've had to turn off the water to half the city."

Charlie frowned. That was very odd indeed, because the pipes down here were new- he'd helped install them himself, just a couple of months ago, and he knew it was all done properly. He said as much to Tom, who agreed.

"And that's not all. Look here."

Tom help up a piece of pipe that had just been removed for his friend's inspection. Charlie studied the way the metal was- not just broken. Bent, _torn-_ and not by any sort of power tool, which would have left more uniform markings...

"Almost looks like it's been cut..." he said.

"More like ripped apart," Tom said. He looked confused, and then he laughed. "I almost think... no, never mind."

"What?" said Charlie. "Come on; I can use a laugh this morning."

"I was just thinking..." Tom shook his head. "Looks like it was done by a massive claw..."

"Maybe we should call those blokes from the telly," said another worker. "You know, from the ARC? The ones who hunt dinosaurs?"

Everyone had another good laugh. Since what the government called Convergence, they knew it was technically possible to encounter some prehistoric creature, displaced through an anomaly in time. But very few people had actually seen one in person, and to the great majority of people, the whole idea seemed surreal. Half of Charlie's co-workers thought the government had invented the whole thing for some reason- maybe to take people's minds off Parliament's blundering. Sometimes he half-believed that himself. In any case, he didn't think for a moment the pipe had actually been cut by a claw, and neither did anyone else.

After a few moments of laughter, Tom's face turned red and he looked away. "Told you it was mad..."

"Ah, go on with you!" said Charlie, waving off the whole thing. "Come on, lads. We've got our work cut out for us. 'Massive claw,' indeed..."

Their laughter echoed through the chamber, echoed through that whole section of the sewer- including in a chamber only a few dozen metres away, where a sparkling golden portal to another time had just deposited five specimens from the early Cretaceous Period.

Tom and Charlie wouldn't have been able to identify them- might not even have recognised them for dinosaurs, since the long tails they used for balance and the brown feathers that covered their bodies made them more closely resemble some sort of horrible bird with the jaws of an alligator. But a palaeontologist, or even one of those blokes from the telly, could have identified them as _Deinonychus antirrhopus_, the larger, even surlier cousin of the familiar _Velociraptor_. This identification would have been made easy by the presence of the "Terrible Claw" on the creature's feet that gave the species its name. The claw was wickedly curved, between ten and fifteen centimetres in length, and ideal for slashing through a pipe- or through the flesh of its prey.

In addition to being killing machines, these creatures were among the cleverest and best-adapted dinosaurs who ever walked the Earth. At the distant sound of voices, the largest of them cocked its head, listened for a moment, then crept down the tunnel. Its pack followed suit, formidable claws clicking against the ground and echoing through the enclosed space.

If the workers had been more alert- if, say, they'd taken the idea of a threat suitable for the ARC seriously- that sound might have alerted them to danger. But likely it wouldn't have saved them. From the moment the anomaly appeared, it was probably destined to be what it was: the last sound many of them would ever hear.

* * *

Jess Parker woke slowly, dreamily, caught in that half-asleep state where one doesn't quite know where one is, what's happened recently, or even necessarily one's own name.

Her eyes blinked open; the room seemed very bright. She dimly perceived someone moving elsewhere in the flat: dishes clinked in the kitchen. The sound brought her back to full awareness, and she sat up quickly, clutching her blanket to her in automatic embarrassment at her state of undress. Then embarrassment faded as she remembered the events of the previous night. She caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror across the room. She'd never seen a wider smile in her life, certainly not from herself. Then she caught the whiff of something scorched on the air and the wrinkle of her nose spoiled the image. She threw on a robe and hurried out to the kitchen.

She found Becker out there, already dressed, resolutely attempting to flip over an egg that appeared well past the point of no return.

The last thing Jess wanted to do was discourage him, so she readied her most cheerful tone: "Oh, you can cook!"

"Eh- not really, no." Becker smiled when he caught sight of her, then turned away to hide the slight blush. "I mean, I have done. But you wouldn't want to eat it. This was really more of a gesture."

He finally did manage to turn the egg, or at least scrape most of it off the pan. Not for the first time, Jess wondered how he'd managed to survive so long on his own. She supposed the Army cooks probably had something to do with it.

"Well, it's very sweet," she said. Then the smoke alarm sounded. "And a bit dangerous. Here, better let me take that..."

There was nothing to be done for the eggs; she was more concerned with dousing the small grease fire in the pan before her neighbours were confronted with a sudden fire drill. Becker managed to deactivate the alarm, and she scraped the remains of the food into the rubbish bin while he wasn't looking. They stood in a cloud of filthy black smoke, coughing until their eyes watered. At some point in the middle, it turned into laughter.

Becker took her in his arms and smiled. "Sweet and a bit dangerous. Yes, I like that description."

Jess arched an eyebrow. "You're very confident for a man I nearly broke up with, not long ago."

"Ah, but that's the first thing they teach you in the Army: It's not how an engagement begins, it's how it ends that counts."

"Oh, so it's _Mission Accomplished_ now?" Jess smirked. "I see how it is..."

Becker pulled her closer. Suddenly the small kitchen felt very warm indeed. "Oh, but I think this is only the start of a much longer campaign, requiring a great deal of intense, close-quarters action..."

"You must stop the military metaphors right now. Really." The smirk faded to a smile as their eyes met. "But I do like your thinking. I'd like it even better if you weren't dressed yet. We don't have to be at work for over an hour..."

Becker sighed. "You don't. I've got lots to do this morning. Much as I hate to admit it, Mr. Newman found a number of holes in my security plan. The next time he tries something, he'll get a surprise."

Mention of Newman brought Jess back down to earth. The things she'd discovered about their new team-mate were almost impossible to believe... and yet, they explained all the strange things about him. If he was really some sort of alternative timeline version of Professor Cutter, returned from the grave as her hacking suggested, that ought to be a good thing by rights. But Jess couldn't shake the feeling he'd bring a great deal of trouble to the ARC before he was done.

She pulled away from Becker. "That's... probably a good idea."

He caught the undercurrent of worry in her tone. "Why do you say that? All the work you've been doing for Matt... have you learned something?"

Jess wanted to tell him, but Matt had expressly asked her to keep it all confidential. Becker would certainly understand the concept of _need-to-know_. So she said something that was near enough to being true: "I'm not sure yet. Go on to work."

Becker frowned at her for another moment, then shrugged and turned to go. Jess pulled him back at the last moment. He was surprised at first, and then he smiled.

"One more thing," she said. "You're glad this happened between us, right? I know we've been going sort of fast lately. No regrets?"

"Only that we didn't do this a year ago," Becker said, and kissed her.

Jess melted into the kiss, thinking this was just perfect, this was how it should have been for them all along, and was just wondering whether Becker could be persuaded his extra work could wait a half-hour or so...

When the smoke alarm resumed blaring. They looked up at it in unison and started laughing again. Jess also sort of wondered if Becker could be persuaded cooking lessons would be a fun thing to do together. But there would be plenty of time to sort out how the two of them would handle the practical things. They had all the time in the world, now...

* * *

Down in the sewers, poor Charlie was still hard at work on the junction of pipes. After nearly stripping a particularly tough bolt, he wiped his brow and exhaled.

"Almost done here," he said to Tom. "Where the hell's Richie with the new pipe?"

Tom shrugged. "Not a clue. Everyone's wandering off today..."

"Reckon I'll get it myself..."

With a great sigh of weariness, Charlie stood and set off down the nearest side corridor. A river of filthy water ran somewhere below him, but he knew the paths like a native sewer rat, and soon reached the tunnel where Richie should have been.

Only Richie wasn't there. Charlie looked around, frowning, then noticed what he thought was Richie's torch on the other side of the tunnel. He took a few steps toward it...

It wasn't a torch. It was silver and gold, almost like a Christmas ornament, and it seemed to shimmer with an internal light...

"What_ is_ that?" Charlie said. He turned and cupped his hand around his mouth, the better to shout back to his friend. "Tom! Hey, Tom! Come and have a look at this!"

Tom didn't answer, so he turned and approached the glowing portal himself, transfixed by its fractured beauty. He was so mesmerised, he didn't even see the Deinonychus until it slammed into him from the side.

Charlie didn't have time to scream- at first. Not until it slashed across his midsection with that claw and fell on him. Then he did a good deal of screaming- even as the lone creature was joined by one of its mates, then two, then three...

In the middle of the feast, Charlie finally lost consciousness. He would never regain it. Given what was left of him when the pack was finished, that was certainly for the best.

* * *

The sun was shining and the breeze just perfect as Jess Parker approached the Anomaly Research Centre. She practically skipped up the steps- on this morning, this day of all days, she felt certain nothing could spoil her mood.

Then she encountered Chris Newman at the top of the stairs. He was looking out at the city, lost in though, even more rumpled and stormy than usual. Even his slouch hat hung off his head at an odd angle, as though it couldn't wait to escape him at the first opportunity. He was puffing on a cigarette, which smelled worse than the grease fire and wasn't doing either of their lungs any good, but one look at his cold, clear eyes told Jess a lecture would not be appreciated.

"Well, Mr. Newman," she said in the brightest tone she could manage. "This is a surprise. Isn't it a lovely day?"

"No," he said, and averted his eyes.

"Well... all right, then."

Jess turned and tried to march past him, but Newman blew out a cloud of smoke and grunted, "If it's so lovely, perhaps you should take the day off."

Jess frowned at him, wondering at the concern. But it wasn't concern she saw in those eyes- nor was it simply Newman's surly demeanour at work. He watched her urgently, angrily, like a condemned man.

She shook her head. "I couldn't. Wish I could. I've got a lot of work."

She started to move on; to her shock, Newman reached out and caught her wrist. Jess tried to pull away, but his grip was like a steel vice.

"You should _really_ take today off."

"Why are you so interested?" Jess said.

Newman looked away. He took a long puff of the cigarette, gathering himself. "I've got a sense about things. You pick it up, as a merc. You know when it'll be a bad day. It's a really bad day at the ARC, Jess. You don't want to be here."

Jess could hardly avoid the sense he was trying to tell her something- more than that, like something inside him wanted to speak. If he was in some sense Cutter, maybe it was the shreds of that very different man's sense of decency reaching out to her. Jess didn't want to discourage him- but she didn't know what else to do.

"My work is here," she said. "So are my friends. I wouldn't leave them. So unless... I mean, is there something you'd like me to tell the others?"

Newman stared at her- but whatever was in his eyes vanished, and he released her wrist. "No."

"Are you sure? I told you, if you need to-"

"No!" he said, more definitely. "I'm getting old. Worry too much. Pay me no mind, Jess. Thank you."

Jess took a single step back, then another, unsure she believed him. But Newman went back to puffing on his cigarette and staring into space, seemingly putting her out of his mind entirely. He almost faded from view, became insubstantial, as though any possibility of reasoning with him had been removed.

"You know where I am if you need me," Jess said. "Good morning, Mr. Newman."

The mercenary grunted and waved vaguely in her direction. Jess turned and walked into the ARC, surprised at the way the once-pleasant breeze now sent a chill straight up her spine...


	2. Act One

**Primeval 6.6 **("Shadow of a Man")

by qjay

___DISCLAIMER: Primeval was created by Adrian Hodges and Tim Haines. It does not belong to me. This is not-for-profit fan fiction, and no infringement is intended._

**Act One**

Inside the ARC, approaching the Hub where Jess plied her trade, Matt Anderson was enjoying something altogether rare in his job: the chance for an extended conversation with someone he actually liked. In this case, it was Emily Merchant, who walked beside him in the first playful mood he'd seen from her since her return from the Pleistocene a few weeks earlier. She punched him lightly in the arm, chastising him for one of his frequent bouts of excessive worrying.

"Matt, really, you've got to stop apologising. I'm _fine_!"

"Yeah, but I should have been there sooner. I should have taken the lead in searching for you in the past. Instead, I let Lester scare me into-"

"It worked out all right. I wasn't alone; I had Abby with me!" Emily's expression turned mischievous. "Not that it wasn't a challenge. I had no idea how bossy she was!"

Matt was glad Emily didn't know how close that encounter had come to turning out very differently. She'd never seen the Southfield soldier who'd been milliseconds from taking a shot at her unprotected back when they made their escape, and Matt didn't see any reason to tell her. Instead, he joined in the banter.

"What do you care if someone's bossy? You never follow orders anyway."

"Yes," Emily grinned, "but I prefer to ignore things that are phrased _nicely_..."

Matt stopped and smiled. "I'm just glad you're here. Duncan's leaving, Connor and Abby will be back... if we could just get rid of Newman, the ARC would be back to normal."

But Emily wasn't done teasing. "Is that why you're glad I'm back? As a return to a pleasant routine?"

"Well, no." He touched her hand. "I'd like things with us to get back to normal, too. Well... better than normal. Better than before. Not that they weren't-" Emily's amusement only seemed to be growing, and he sighed. "You know what I'm trying to say."

"Yes, but it's rather adorable how bad you are at it." She wrapped her hand around his. "I'm glad to be back, too..."

Her hand was warm and sort, and Matt was suddenly conscious of wishing they could touch more often. The moment stretched out...

Someone cleared his throat behind them: Becker. Judging by his knowing smile, the security captain was in an unusually playful mood of his own.

"Just passing through with the new security protocols. But carry on; this looks much more important."

Matt sighed as the other man handed him a tablet. He scanned the adjustments Becker wanted with only passing interest, thinking it really could have waited. "Yeah, this looks fine. When did you want to-"

"So is there finally something official between the two of you?" Becker interrupted, looking at Emily.

"Difficult to say," she told him. "People keep interrupting..."

Becker held up his hands, an innocent gesture. "Only trying to keep my pool-winning streak intact. I have '_Even longer than Connor and Abby_,' so..."

An annoyed Matt shoved the tablet back into his hands. "When did you want to test these?"

"Any time today, if you like."

"You're in a suspiciously good mood," said Emily, noting the grin that had yet to leave Becker's face. "Acting accommodating, making jokes..."

"I don't know what you mean," said Becker. "I'm always like this."

"...being charming." Emily turned. "Matt, this man is a future clone."

"That's one possibility," Matt said, eyeing his old friend. "Keep an eye on Jess for the other..."

On cue, their team coordinator popped into the control centre, heading for the Hub with a particular spring in her step. "_Good_ morning!Has anyone been outside? Isn't it lovely? I mean, except for Newman, of course. Hello, Becker! Hello, all!"

"And there it is," said Matt with a smile.

Emily arched an eyebrow. "I'll take her. You take him. Meet you later with the details?"

"Done."

Emily caught Jess's elbow before she reached the Hub and guided her off toward the other side of the room. "So, Jess. You and I really don't talk often enough..."

"You keep telling me to hush."

"Yes, and I don't want you to think I don't mean that! _But,_ there are exceptions..."

Amused, Matt watched them walk away. Then he turned to find Becker doing the same thing. He cleared his throat, and the security captain reasserted his innocent look.

"I've been interrogated by experts, you know."

"As though I have to ask!" Matt scoffed. Then he remembered to concentrate on business, one of the less pleasant aspects of being team leader. "I'd like to run the drill as soon as Connor and Abby arrive."

Becker frowned. "They're not in yet?"

"They're at Heathrow, seeing off Duncan. Apparently Connor found his friend a new job..."

"Long as it's not here," said Becker, perhaps remembering the mistakes made by their temporary technical assistant. Good mood or not, Becker didn't tolerate incompetence very well.

Come to think of it, that was a trait he and Matt shared. Danny Quinn, as Matt remembered, was a bit more devil-may-care. Matt hoped his predecessor was in the mood for a challenge...

"All right," Becker said, turning serious. "We should alert Newman when they get here."

Matt blinked. "You just said _Newman_ without scowling."

"Proves nothing," Becker sniffed. Then he backtracked. "It's possible we've been too suspicious of Newman. I talked to him. He's not all bad."

Matt caught the way his eyes darted in Jess's direction when he said it. He shook his head and turned to hide the laughter.

"What?" Becker said. "Why is that funny?"

"Nothing, nothing. I'm happy for you, mate. I'm glad something's going right for someone around here." Matt shook his head, remembering the intel from Jess. "But as for Newman, I'm more convinced than ever he's a problem. Which brings me to this security drill..."

With Becker all business now, Matt proceeded to lay out one little addition to the security drill, something he thought they might put in action simultaneously. He needed to talk to Connor about it as soon as the young genius returned, and he hoped to check in with Jess, as well.

They were probably worrying about nothing. As likely as not, the discrepancies Jess found in their colleague's personal history were only the residue of his former spymasters writing him a false identity and botching the job slightly. But it wouldn't hurt to take precautions, and Matt found one possibility particularly interesting...

* * *

Down in the Menagerie, beside the large pen belonging to _Kaprosuchus_, the terrifying prehistoric crocodile, Chris Newman was awaiting contact with a creature nearly as cold-blooded. He'd put off this business as long as he could; from the amount of pressure he was getting, he strongly suspected further delay would only make things worse.

He attached a small disk to the wall of the enclosure, and twisted activating the jamming mechanism. Kaprosuchus glared at him suspiciously; Newman glared right back. Today of all days, he was spoiling for a fight. But it wouldn't do to waste his energy on a dumb beast.

At least, not a dumb beast who didn't have leverage against him. Newman raised a mobile phone to his ear and rang up one who did.

"Coms in this section are disabled," he said, when the other answered. "This call can't be traced."

"Well, that's damn good of you, Mr. Newman," said the gruff voice, American-accented, on the other end. "I'd almost think you were following orders."

"I do follow orders, sir," Newman said stiffly.

"Really? By my reckoning, it's been nearly two weeks since I issued my directive. Yet Jess Parker still lives; Jennifer Lewis isn't here. You haven't brought her, as I asked. What exactly have you done?"

"Made preparations," said Newman. "You'll soon have what you want."

"You're right, I will- whether you provide it or not." The American seemed to relish the pause before he said, "I've grown tired of waiting for you, Newman. Plan B has been put into operation."

"What's Plan B?" he asked, keeping his voice calmer than he felt.

"It doesn't concern you. Just know my representative is en route. If you won't deal with these people, I assure you, he will."

Newman hissed. "That's not necessary, sir. I'm nearly ready."

"Oh, but I think it is necessary," the American gloated. "You concern me, Newman. My colleagues thought it was a risk bringing you in. I argued for you, and won. What, I reasoned, would be the ARC's greatest nightmare? Wouldn't it be a version of the man who all but created it? A man working for us."

"Yes," Newman said, "but..."

"Assuming you do work for us. There's some concern you might be allowing Nick Cutter's undisciplined impulses to distract you."

Newman sighed. "You needn't worry about my discipline."

"I hope not," said the American. "You've had several chances. If you fail us again..."

He trailed off, dangling all sorts of unpleasant possibilities in the wake on his sentence. Newman had known a lot of men like the American director in his time, and most of them were hot air. The trouble was, he knew very well this fellow wasn't entirely bluff. He could do everything he claimed... to Newman, at least. All the same, he'd been through too much in his life to be bullied like a clerk in a shop. He felt his ruddy complexion turn even redder.

"I haven't failed you," he explained, as to a child. "I've been gaining their trust."

"And they've been gaining yours," the American countered. "Jess Parker, for example..."

"She doesn't have to die."

"Not according to the plan, no." The other luxuriated in his pronouncement. "Not strictly. But I think she's a useful test for you."

Something snapped in Newman at the idea this petty little man thought _he_ was the untrustworthy one. It broke whatever was him inside and allowed something else to come out- the part he generally knew only in dreams, the hidden memories of Nick Cutter.

"It's an arrogant waste of life!"

"One of the Directors is dead because of them," the American said mildly. "Where I come from, it's just good business to respond in kind. That way, people know to take you seriously. If you wait until my man arrives, you'll be more than welcome to join her in death- as Newman, as Cutter. Whomever you like.

"Either way, no one will mourn you, or even know you ever existed. Sound good?"

Newman drew in a long breath and let it out again. "No..."

"Then don't question me again."

Newman opened his mouth to respond- to argue, to object, to question- but the line was already dead. He stared at the offending mobile for a long moment, then executed it in the manner he figured it deserved: by tossing it to Kaprosuchus. The prehistoric creature snapped it up in the air, suspecting a treat, and spat it out in so many pieces.

If anyone found those pieces, there could yet be trouble. But Newman didn't reckon there was time for that- or for anything at all, save tending to a messy bit of business. A line from Shakespeare crossed his mind, a line he'd almost certainly never taken time to read. It must have been Cutter:

_If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly..._

Newman reached up and adjusted the device he'd planted. A light on it began blinking, signifying that an intrusive program had been activated in the bowels of the ARC.

It was a good program, very effective. His own invention, drawing on a little of Cutter's genius and a lot of hard experience. It worked quickly. Jess would be proud.

Scowling, deeply unhappy, Newman walked away to dip his hands in another ocean of blood...

* * *

In the terminal at Heathrow Airport, Connor Temple stood with his new wife and his old friend. Duncan was loaded with carry-on bags and looked even more awkward than usual. Abby looked awkward because... well, she'd never quite taken to Duncan, ever since the incident when he and another friend had inadvertently placed her in the path of a deadly prehistoric parasite. Bygones...

Connor reached out and shook Duncan's hand. "Are you sure you have to leave_ right now_?"

"I'm sorry," Duncan said. "I hate to miss the wedding, but I couldn't say no to an offer like that! Permanent analyst for Danny Quinn's team in Los Angeles? It's like I'm an international spy!"

Connor saw Abby smirking from the corner of his eye; he suspected Duncan missing the wedding was her favourite part of this whole thing. She hadn't been looking forward to his toast, in which she would inevitably be referred to simply as _the hot blonde._..

"Thanks for recommending me," Duncan continued, "and for having the last fellow sacked."

Now Abby made a sound halfway between a cough and a sardonic laugh. Connor knew she disapproved of his handling of the whole situation, in which he'd sent Duncan's predecessor Gideon Anderson off to Ireland, hopefully to fulfil his destiny as a father of heroes...

"I didn't have him sacked!" Connor said, though he recalled using that very word. "I was protecting the timeline! It's... complicated..."

"It's a really long story," Abby said, more in the spirit of twisting the knife than helpfulness.

"What I mean is, thanks for not giving up on me."

Connor clasped his friend's shoulder and smiled. That part, at least, was true. He was probably the only person on Earth who hadn't thought Duncan was mad a few years ago, much less who would have brought him into the ARC. Every so often, he made the right call...

"Here they come," said Abby, gesturing toward the gate.

The identity of Duncan's escort proved a bit surprising: It was Sharon Clarke, the American secret agent in Danny's employ. Sharon was a tall, beautiful blonde, undeniably attractive- and Connor hadn't tried to deny it at their meeting, which served as a reminder than he tended to balance those few good calls with a lot of really bad ones.

"Connor! Abby!" Sharon called as she approached. "Good to see you again."

"Sharon," he said, a Total Professional. "Welcome to the UK."

"Thanks; wish I had time to sightsee." She turned to Connor's friend. "Duncan, right? I'm Sharon Clarke. I work for Danny Quinn."

"Oh, wow," said Duncan, looking up at the American agent with a slightly dazed expression.

"Easy, mate..." Connor muttered.

"I'm gonna be working with _you_?"

Sharon turned and gestured to someone coming up behind her: a tall, strong fellow with Latin features and a military haircut.

Sharon might have swallowed something unpleasant; for reasons Connor hadn't fully worked out, she didn't like Major Rivera, the former U.S. Marine who served as Becker's counterpart in the American ARC. He was sort of a tough guy, hard to warm up to, but this seemed to border on hostility, even distrust. If Danny trusted him, he had to be all right. Didn't he?

"You'll also be working with Major Rivera, of course," said Sharon.

Rivera smirked. "Do you really think he knows I'm in the room?"

Sharon glared; again, it seemed to speak of more than annoyance at the mild sexism in the major's remark. "Hey, Rambo, why don't you take the new guy and grab me a Diet Coke or something? I need a word with Connor and Abby. Personal message from Danny. Old friends. You understand."

"Sure," said Rivera mildly. If there was any suspicion there, he didn't show it. He grabbed Duncan by the elbow and dragged him none-too-subtly to the other side of the terminal. Sharon waited until he was out of earshot; he never looked back.

Connor cleared his throat. "What's Danny's message?"

"The message is from me," Sharon said. "Whatever you do, don't trust Rivera. Not now or ever. Back in LA, Gideon and I had the distinct impression he wasn't a team player."

"How much not a team player?" Abby said.

"How much would you like to be on the bottom of the Pacific right now?"

"That's bad." Connor frowned. "But isn't it your problem, not ours?"

"Oh, no, not really." Sharon cracked a smile that wasn't friendly at all. "I was supposed to be on my flight alone. This morning, I found out he'd swung some sort of cultural exchange deal at the last minute. He's headed back to the ARC with you."

"You're kidding!" Abby said, her nose wrinkling as she took our her mobile. "I'd better call this in to Lester..."

She took a few steps away and started dialling. Rivera and Duncan were on their way back; Sharon caught Connor's eye and grimaced.

"Like I said, good luck..."

"Same to you," Connor said. "You haven't shared a transatlantic flight with Duncan yet."

Sharon smirked. "Yeah, I guess he's not smooth like you..."

"Oh, that hurts."

A moment later, and a moment before the others, Abby returned. "Lester says it's legitimate. Arranged through the Minister, nothing he could do. I told him to have a reception waiting, just in case."

"Good," Sharon murmured. She turned at the last moment and snagged a soft drink from Rivera. "Thanks, chief. You're almost useful."

"She loves me," Rivera said to the others. "So, I assume you know we're going to be working together? I'd like to learn more about your methods at the ARC. Should be very interesting."

"Yeah," Connor agreed, "it should."

A voice reverberated through the terminal, and Sharon looked up. "They're calling our flight."

"Right," said Duncan. Surprisingly, he turned to Connor's wife first. "Sorry I didn't get your name at first, but I've got it now. It's Abby. And you're really good for Connor, so take care of him."

Abby still looked a bit awkward, but she managed a smile and a brief hug. "Safe trip, Duncan."

Duncan turned and wrapped Connor up in a bear hug. Connor patted him on the back, and after a moment they separated.

"I'll miss you, mate," Connor said. "I really wish we'd gotten a chance to talk."

"You mean, in-between the dinosaurs and sharks and time-travel?"

"Yup," Connor said. "In there somewhere."

"Next time," Duncan laughed. He turned with Sharon and gazed at her adoringly before calling over his shoulder, "Name your first-born Duncan!"

"Er, no!" Abby called back. "Really, no!"

"Think about it!" Smiling, Duncan turned back to his new colleague. "I don't suppose you play World of Warcraft? Guild Wars, any MMO's at all?"

Sharon glanced back at the others helplessly before disappearing from view. Connor shook his head and laughed.

"Poor Duncan; just like the last bloke. What is it about Hollywood that causes delusions of grandeur in geeks?"

"I don't know," Abby said. "What caused them in you?"

"Now, you can't compare them to us!" Connor said. "I love Duncan like a brother, but he's a bigger nerd than me, and she's-"

Abby stood before him, hands on her hips, not quite smiling. "She's... what?"

"She's not his type."

"You were going to say she's prettier than me, weren't you?"

"No!" Connor said. "No, no. No. Noooooo. Never said that. Wasn't gonna say that. You can't prove it."

"Yeah, but that's how that sentence ends. He's a bigger nerd than you, and she's hotter than-"

Connor winced, hoping the inevitable argument would be brief and wouldn't leave him sleeping on the sofa again. Major Rivera looked on with obvious amusement. Both their expressions turned to concern when they saw Abby staring straight ahead at nothing, frozen in mid-sentence.

"Abby...?" he said, but she didn't answer.

* * *

_She's in a familiar place... in the ARC, just outside Connor's lab. Or what's left of his lab. It's a burned-out shell, now. Abby can smell the smoke, wood and clothing and chemicals burning. Connor's computer equipment sparks and sputters; most of it is useless, as charred and ruined as everything around her. Connor's lab table is overturned and broken in the middle of the room. And beneath it..._

_"Connor!"_

_Abby runs into the room and tries to move the heavy table; with all her strength, she manages to push it aside. Smells of burning hair and flesh overpower the rest. Abby looks down in horror..._

_Connor is half-buried in rubble, burned, bleeding from a hundreds cuts, unconscious. She tries to find the source of his injury, but there's no single wound, he's just... broken, tossed about like a rag doll in whatever catastrophe destroyed the lab._

_As Abby watches, his chest rises. He draws a ragged breath with great effort. Then it falls, and does not rise again. Abby screams, clutches his lifeless form. Somewhere behind her, something growls..._

"No!" Abby gasped, blinking several times.

She was... where she started, at the airport with Connor and Major Rivera. She looked around at the travellers and passers-by, confused...

Connor was staring at her in concern. He touched her arm. "No, what?"

"No... sorry, what was I saying?"

Connor half-smiled. "I think you were yelling at me. Look, I don't know why we keep arguing about this. Obviously Sharon is attractive, but so what? You're the most beautiful woman in the world to me. You know that."

Abby touched Connor's hand, grabbed it like a life preserver and squeezed, willing herself back to reality. She shook her head. "Forget it. I was only joking."

"Abby, are you all right?"

"Fine!" she said quickly. "Yeah, 'course. I'm fine. Just forget it."

"Nice save," Rivera murmured to her husband.

Connor shrugged. "I didn't think it was that good. Don't take this the wrong way, but I really wish you were getting a safety lecture from a flight attendant right now."

"Oh, come on," said Rivera, slapping his back. "You saw _our_ operation. This is only fair. I think it's gonna be fun."

He turned, slung a bag over his shoulder, and started walking away from the gate. Abby shared a look with Connor.

"Fun," she repeated. But there was nothing else to do, so they followed Rivera.

Connor was still worried about her; he kept looking at her from the corner of his eye. Abby was worried, too, and not about herself. She'd been worried about Connor since the future Matt made his pronouncement, but she kept telling herself he'd simply gone mad from the stresses of the time loop. Even if he hadn't, there was no way she'd let it happen now that she knew about it. She'd nearly been obsessing; she must have pictured a scenario like the one in the lab a hundred times. Looked at that way, the whole thing might have been some vivid fantasy, perhaps a half-remembered nightmare coming through her subconscious before she made herself sick with worry...

But it wasn't a memory. It wasn't a thought. It wasn't a vision. Abby had _been_ there, as surely as if she'd stepped through an anomaly to the future. She remembered the chill at the back of her neck as the thing behind her growled. She remembered the taste of tears running down her cheeks.

She remembered the smell. She _couldn't_ have imagined that. She just couldn't.

She'd seen the future. Matt's future, the one he kept warning about. It was every bit as bad as he said. And she had no idea what to do next.

* * *

Jess tried to put the previous night out of her mind as she worked at the Hub. She was a professional, after all. Becker would still be there when work was over, and right now, her work could save someone's life, particularly if she could solve the riddle of Newman. She still thought the mercenary had been trying to give her a clue; she determined to approach him at the first opportunity and press him for more. If he was out of time, if he wasn't what he seemed, maybe they could help him. No one knew as much about such things as Jess and her colleagues at the ARC. Maybe it wasn't too late for him, and if it wasn't, maybe they could still avoid the prophesied disaster.

All those thoughts helped Jess leave her personal life behind and get to work. The trouble was, Emily kept picking the personal up again and throwing it in her face.

"I'm not saying you have to divulge the intimate details!" her friend said from somewhere behind Jess's left shoulder. "But come on! We've all been waiting for the last two years! We deserve _something_!"

"Hmm," said Jess, not looking back. "Still no."

"I'll trade you some juicy bits about Queen Victoria's court!"

"Already in the historical record."

"Agh!" said Emily. "I _hate_ not having any new gossip!"

Jess was about to make a scathing reply- well, a scathing reply by her standards, which for anyone else barely rose to the level of "mildly sarcastic"- but something beeped on her display. Internal systems error. Jess worked the Hub for details, but it was slow to surrender them: thanks to all the security changes, the system felt sluggish. She couldn't call up the necessary data. In some cases, she couldn't_ find_ the necessary data.

"That's odd," she said, frowning.

"No," said Emily, "don't think you can get out of this by inventing an emergency!"

"How about an actual emergency?" Jess said. She ran another diagnostic, which confirmed her findings. "The standard radio-frequency sweep has been cancelled. Probably a bug in the new security protocols; they're making everything slow today."

She might as well have been speaking ancient Greek when she spoke of computers to Emily. Actually, as a 19th century woman with a good deal of classical learning and a quicker mind than the men of her time would have preferred, Emily might have done considerably better with ancient Greek. But she did her best.

"The radio detects anomalies, right? Could we have missed one?"

"Possibly," said Jess. "I'm not sure how long it's been deactivated. My access is intermittent; I might have to go down to the server room and make a few adjustments."

"I'll go with you," said Emily.

"Good," said Jess, without enthusiasm. She pushed back her chair and moved toward the door with Emily in tow. This was precisely why she objected to people, even Becker, mucking about with the computers. Even Connor was scared to change the programming without her permission, and for good reason. If they'd run the security update through her, it would be done by now!

If a T-Rex appeared in the middle of Trafalgar Square because Becker was determined to show up Newman, she'd be... mildly upset with him. She tried to work up a proper anger, but she couldn't. Despite everything, she couldn't imagine this being anything but a really wonderful day...

* * *

Newman stood in a corridor outside an open door, listening to his so-called team leader grow ever more upset on coms.

"Mr. Newman," Matt's voice said for the third time, "report to the damn Hub."

Newman arched his eyebrows; the obscenity was new. He judged that meant he couldn't stall any longer, so he reactivated his coms.

"Yeah, coming," he said. "I'm just attending to something..."

Matt wasn't thrilled with that, either, but so long as he got his way, he didn't quarrel. Newman stepped away from the door marked 'SERVER ROOM' and dropped a small, silver orb on the ground. It rolled into a corner of the room and began to hum softly.

_Well, that's that,_ Newman thought, and walked away.


	3. Act Two

**Primeval 6.6 **("Shadow of a Man")

by qjay

___DISCLAIMER: Primeval was created by Adrian Hodges and Tim Haines. It does not belong to me. This is not-for-profit fan fiction, and no infringement is intended._

* * *

**Act Two**

In the space of an hour, the pack owned the sewers. A few hapless workers remained in hiding; the rest mingled their blood with the water flowing through the tunnels, leaving the the dim, damp places thick with the smell of carnage.

Deprived of a concentrated food source, the Deinonychus spread out in all directions. Periodically one of them would happen upon a survivor and send out its shrill call to the others, and then the feast would begin anew.

One Deinonychus, too content to hunt any longer, stood by one of the earliest kills, picking over little more than a pile of bones. It looked up and cocked its head when a new call sounded through the tunnels; an urgent call that demanded a response, coming from the far side of the silver-gold anomaly still spinning at the end of the nearest tunnel.

The Deinonychus tried to ignore it; but it was an urgent call, designed through trial and error to appeal to something genetically hard-wired into the creature. Any of the large raptors who heard it couldn't help but respond.

After a moment, as the call continued to echo through the tunnels, the Deinonychus stepped away from its meal and bobbed toward the anomaly. The sounds of claws skidding against wet stone all around it said its companions were only a few steps behind...

* * *

Connor was at the wheel when they arrived at the gates of the Anomaly Research Centre, with Abby riding shotgun and Major Rivera in the seat behind them. The American major kept checking his mobile, occasionally tapping buttons as though texting with someone. Normally Connor wouldn't have minded- he was as addicted to technology as anyone he knew- but the major's sudden appearance and smug demeanour, combined with Sharon Clarke's warning, had made him wary.

He was on the point of objecting to Rivera's preoccupation, when Abby beat him to it. "If you've got an appointment somewhere, don't let us keep you."

"Oh, no," said the major, barely glancing at her. "I'm exactly where I want to be."

"Lovely," Abby said, and sank back into her seat, sullen and irritated.

She hadn't been herself since the honeymoon ended; really, since before that. Connor knew she worried about his fate. He wished he could explain to her the steps he'd taken to prepare her and the others for his absence, steps which- if he wasn't too much mistaken- had led to her moment of distraction in the airport terminal. But the explanation, no matter how necessary, would hardly have made Abby feel better, so for the time being he kept his silence and hoped he wasn't horribly wrong about anything.

They pulled up to the guardhouse, where a pleasant-faced fellow named Jenkins, with glasses and a mop of sandy-blond hair, had the watch. He'd been one of Becker's men since the days of the first ARC, and Connor knew him for a decent fellow, though they'd never really talked much.

Still, he was alert and trustworthy, and told Connor everything he needed to know with a silent nod and about one-quarter of a smile as they pulled up to the gate. Major Rivera's reception was ready, just in case.

"Morning, sir."

"Morning." There were formalities to be followed before the welcoming party. Connor showed his I.D. In a half-hearted, bored manner. "Connor Temple, Abby Maitland."

Abby leaned over with a sudden smile. "Maitland-Temple."

"Oh, yeh, I'd heard the rumours," said Jenkins. "Congratulations."

"Thanks," Connor said, arching his eyebrows. _Apparently we're telling everyone now._ To Abby, he said, "Sure you want to use the name? It's never been my favourite."

Abby touched his shoulder. "Don't be silly. It's the name of a future Nobel Prize winner. I want them to make the cheque out to both of us."

Her manner still worried Connor, but the joke was charming enough that he laughed. "The Temples... and guest."

Jenkins made a show of frowning at a clipboard. "I don't have him on the timetable. I'll have to check with Lester."

That was a prearranged test, to see how Rivera would react if he seemed to be suspected. But he kept tapping buttons and barely looked up. Worry was the last way Connor would have categorised his reaction.

_Either he's really far behind us... or really far ahead of us. Or he's innocent, I suppose, but what are the odds?_

Jenkins stepped away to talk to the Hub for the exact proper length of time, then turned and handed back Connor's credentials.

"Sorry about that, sir. Have a nice day."

Connor eased the car through the gates, thinking: _Nice day, indeed. Exactly how nice is yet to be determined..._

* * *

A few moments earlier, Matt and Becker were still working on their security drill at the Hub when James Lester entered, in the midst of what was becoming a familiar argument with their new/old PR specialist, Jennifer Lewis-Miller.

"I don't know what more you expect from me, James!" she was saying. "I've helped you all I can!"

"And done a wonderful job," Lester said, polite as he only was when engaged in a shameless lie. "That camouflage beast incident barely even made the news. The ARC hasn't run so smoothly since... well, since you worked here."

Jenny knew precisely what he was doing, and rolled her eyes. "I'm glad, but the fact remains, it was meant to be a _temporary _arrangement..."

"And it ought to continue until we're certain you're safe."

"Then perhaps you could give me some idea when that will be!" Jenny tossed up her hands in frustration.

"Connor and Abby will be back today." Lester remained maddeningly calm as he changed the subject. "Don't you even want to see them?"

"I want to see my_ husband!_ Michael's getting suspicious of this whole thing! I so don't want to ruin this, James, I really don't..."

She was desperately sincere, and Matt felt for her. But if she hoped appealing to Lester as an old friend would work... well, as an old friend, she couldn't possibly have thought that would work.

"We will, of course, do everything we can to help smooth things over. Surely he won't object to you lending us your talents in the name of national security? Things may be slightly calmer today, but the ARC remains in crisis mode, and your work is invaluable." If he'd left it there, that might have (slightly) placated Jenny. But, being Lester, he couldn't resist tossing in a little barb: "One can hardly fail to notice how quickly you've formed a rapport with Mr. Newman, for example."

Jenny's face turned red- with fury, Matt judged, more than embarrassment. "Just what are you implying?"

"Nothing, nothing," Lester said. "Only that we've had our troubles with Newman, and he trusts you as much as anyone. It would be helpful to know his thinking..."

"If you want to know that, why don't you ask him? You're his boss!"

Lester sighed. "I'm afraid things have become a good deal more complicated than at the ARC you remember."

"If that's true, it's even more reason for me to get out of here before I'm caught up in it!" Jenny wasn't finished- Matt suspected she was about to teach Lester a few words he hadn't even learned from the soldiers under his command- but then her mobile chimed. She lifted it to her ear with a growl.

"Jennifer Lewis! ...what? I told that reporter, no comment! He bloody well _will_ take no for an answer! Oh... hang on, I'll be right there." She lowered the mobile and glared at Lester. "Don't think we're finished."

"Oh, I ought to know better than that by now..."

Jenny stalked from the room, while Lester wandered over near the Hub and leaned against it heavily. From his posture and the lines on his forehead, Matt could see the fatigue he tried not to reveal. This business with Southfield was taking its toll on all of them, but might have been hardest on Lester: He bore some of the responsibility for Southfield, at least for not shutting it down soon enough, as Matt's future double had been only too happy to remind him. He was struggling not only against the future, but the past as well.

If he hadn't been such a bastard of late, Matt would have sympathised with him. But there was work to do, and no time for holding grudges.

Becker motioned for the ARC's director to join them. "Lester, there you are. I was about to call you. We've got a situation."

"With the security drill?"

"Not exactly." Becker called up the black-and-white image of Major Rivera, surreptitiously recorded while Jenkins made his call. "This guest of Connor and Abby's... you're quite sure he's from the American ARC? Have you seen him before?"

Lester shook his head. "The whole thing was done through diplomatic channels at the last moment. Should I recognise him?"

"No, but I do," said Matt. "I saw him in the Pleistocene. He led the detachment of soldiers that hunted us for Southfield. His man nearly killed Emily."

Lester frowned. "You're certain it's him?"

"He looked straight at me and draw his weapon. You don't forget a thing like that." Matt scrolled through a few other pages of data he'd called up. "I've been searching the database we appropriated when we shut down the Southfield lab. He turns up there a number of times, too, connected to all manner of projects. He seems to be one of their top operatives."

"Are you saying Danny's against us?"

Becker frowned. "I doubt that very much, but at the moment we don't know who's infiltrated who. We shouldn't allow him entrance."

Lester looked through the data himself. "He knows you saw his face. Why would he come here openly?"

"I dunno," said Matt, "but I agree with Becker. Stop him at the door."

The ARC's director offered a sardonic look that was pure Lester. "I'm surprised at both of you. This man is a diplomatic guest. We're not barbarians; of course he should enter. _Leaving _is another matter entirely..."

Becker grinned. When Matt nodded, putting them all in agreement, he pressed a button on the Hub.

"Elevate the reception to Protocol Seven, Jenkins. Clear him through- and be sure to tell him to have a nice day."

"Yes, sir," said the guard, businesslike.

On the monitor, Connor and Abby's car rolled through the checkpoint. Matt took a deep breath and prepared himself for whatever came next...

* * *

In the corridor approaching the server room, Jess Parker's patience was wearing thin. As team coordinator, she made it her business to know everything that went on in the ARC, and even in the personal lives of her co-workers. But this business of people suddenly being curious about _her_ life was something else again.

"Two guesses!" Emily was saying. "One! One guess about last night! You don't even have to answer directly, just nod..."

Jess sighed. "Is this how other people feel when_ I _keep talking all the time? It's very taxing."

Fortunately, her companion didn't have the chance to bargain further. Matt appeared at the far end of the corridor and called, "Emily, can I see you for a moment?"

"Sure. One second." Emily turned to Jess imploringly. "I'll be right back. I want you to give serious thought to how unfair you're being."

"I'll give it all the thought it deserves," Jess promised.

Emily frowned at her before turning to check in with Matt. Jess started thinking how she'd manage to change the subject when her friend returned. What she probably should have been wondering was: _Why would Matt break off the security drill and chase us all the way down to the server room instead of just calling on coms?_

But she was too distracted with any number of things, including serious business, to give any thought to that at the moment, and she proceeded to the server room alone.

Which was fine. The solid wall of computers housed in that room, the physical nerve centre of the ARC, made her feel quite in her element. Except for a disconcerting humming sound at the limits of her hearing...

_Is a hard drive crashing?_ she wondered. _Is that why everything's running so slowly?_

But the sound wasn't really like the mechanical whirring of a labouring hard drive. It was an organic sound, high-pitched, like the call of some insect, or perhaps a frog. And it was coming...

It was coming from a small silver ball in the corner of the room.

"That's strange," Jess said. She picked the device up and frowned at it, thinking:_ Wireless speaker for an MP3 player? Or perhaps a remote-control signal for... something..._

"Even stranger." She turned back toward the door. "Emily! Matt! I think I've found something here..."

Suddenly the hair stood up on the back of her neck, and something behind her shrieked- the sound made by the silver orb, but a thousand times louder.

Jess whirled to find an anomaly open behind her. She had just enough time to think_ Oh, now this is happening far too often lately_ before something pounced: something like a dinosaur and something like a large bird, all Jess could see was teeth and claws as it flew through the air in what seemed like slow motion.

It landed. Jess was knocked to the ground by some tremendous force and struck her head. There was pressure on her chest; she couldn't breathe. The creature slashed with that awful claw, and her vision turned red with pain she'd never even imagined...

Her brain told her the loud, shrill call continued to fill the room, but Jess knew it was only the sound of her own screaming...

* * *

Emily rounded the corner and found Matt awaiting her with an oddly pained look on his face. He was clutching an EMD and looked for all the world as though he expected trouble. Emily's first instinct was to laugh, as though some joke was being played- and then she knew what the joke was, and all the colour drained from her face.

"Well?" she asked the future version of Matt Anderson. "It's my turn, is it? What do you want?"

Matt turned the EMD around and handed it to her, stock-first. "I wanted to give you this... and to say I'm sorry. I'm really so sorry."

"Matt, what...?"

That's when she heard the scream.

Emily Merchant might have been unavoidably one step behind the future folk when it came to things like time travel and living dinosaurs, but her instincts were good and her bravery second to none. She was back down the corridor and at the door to the server room in a matter of seconds...

And from what she could see, it might have been too late. An awful creature- Emily thought it might have been some sort of raptor- stood over a very pale, very fragile-looking Jess and bared its bloody teeth. There was more blood on the floor, so much blood Emily couldn't even let herself see it.

The creature leaped at her, but she'd already raised the EMD pistol and fired several bolts, knocking it back through what seemed to be an anomaly...

_Right here, with no lockdown? _Again?_ What in the world is going on?_

She knelt beside Jess and felt for a pulse. It took her a long time to find one, and what was there was thready and far too weak. If she didn't get immediate help, she'd bleed out. There was no time for niceties; Emily grabbed her as carefully as possibleand began dragging her from the room.

Another creature, as terrible as the first, stuck its head through the anomaly. Emily fumbled with her weapon and managed to get off a couple of shots, driving it off temporarily, but she couldn't stand against them and rescue Jess at the same time.

"Someone help me, please!" she called. "Come on, _come on_! Becker! Matt! _Someone_! Where the hell are the coms?"

She braced the pistol as best she could and kept firing blindly as she pulled Jess to safety a step at a time. Another raptor-thing appeared from the anomaly, and then another...

_Please please please I can do this I just need a moment just hang on Jess please someone HELP!_

She didn't know how she got Jess over the lip of the server-room door. It seemed to involve some terrible bright light exploding at the back of her mind as adrenaline pounded through her veins. She lost track of herself completely; she wasn't even thinking. One moment Jess was on one side of the door; the next she was on the other, and Emily had no clear memory of having moved her.

One of the creatures was rushing at her, claws grasping for another victim. Emily dove back across Jess's body and slammed shut the door, locking it even as the creature crashed into it from the other side. Emily was thrown across the corridor like a leaf in the wind; though leaves generally didn't strike their skulls against the opposite wall and see stars.

Now pain surged through Emily as well as adrenaline, but on the wall above her, she spotted an intercom switch and dove for it as for a life preserver.

"Medical team to the server room! Security backup, too! Becker, get down here right _now_!"

She didn't know if anyone heard her; if they didn't, she was dead, and that was that. The raptor-thing kept pounding against the server-room door, which couldn't possibly hold much longer. Emily cradled Jess in her arms and aimed her EMD at the door.

"It's all right," she murmured repeatedly, more for her own sake than for Jess, who seemed to be beyond hearing. "It's all right, you'll be okay, I'm not gonna leave you..."

_No matter what_, she thought, as the door rattled again...

* * *

Unfortunately for both women, most of the security contingent was busy with a Protocol Seven situation on the other side of the ARC. In the beginning, they kept out of sight; Jenkins shadowed their guest in his quietly professional manner, as Abby and her husband led Major Rivera through the corridors of the ARC. Rivera noticed the escort, but seemed almost amused. Somehow Abby didn't think it was because he had nothing to hide...

For once, Connor's habit of talking constantly came in handy. He kept up a steady, tour-guide patter as they passed from room to room, distracting all from the awkwardness of the situation.

"Here are the lockers, our home away from home," he said, as they passed through the room where the team suited up for missions. He nodded to an adjoining room full of weights and training equipment. "Over there is where we work out, to keep our edge..."

"Excuse me?" Abby said.

"Well. It's where Abby and Becker work out, and I honestly plan to start someday..."

While glancing at the training room, Rivera pretended to see his shadow for the first time. "Do I get an escort all the way to Lester's office?"

"Sorry, sir," Jenkins said. "It's standard protocol."

"Really? Tough room."

"We're a bit nervous lately," Connor confided.

Rivera nodded and smiled. "For good reason, I'm sure. The people you call Southfield... you have no idea how dangerous."

Abby was about to say something- she wasn't even sure what, something to draw him out or just to snarl a bit- and like that, in the middle of a step, she drifted away:

_She's walking down the corridor with Connor and the others, just a few steps from where she is now. Still wearing that infuriating carefree smile, Major Rivera allows Connor to lead the way, single-file. Abby catches a glimpse of something- some sort of weapon, a small, derringer-like pistol- falling out of his sleeve into his hand._

_He brings up the weapon and aims at the back of Connor's skull-_

"No!" Abby yelped, already running toward Connor and Rivera. The major turned- some sort of metal _was_ in his hand- and Jenkins raised his weapon.

At that point, the world went mad: Becker's security officers poured out of every door, ready to respond in a moment. Their readiness and Abby's proximity startled Rivera into changing his plan. With Connor no longer an unsuspecting target, he grabbed the much smaller man by the scruff of the neck and pulled him close, levelling the gun to Connor's ear as he backed them against the wall. Jenkins and the others gestured with their rifles, shouting for Rivera to drop the gun and release his hostage, but he showed no sign of being anything less than content with how the situation worked out.

"Whoa! Hey, whoa!" Connor cried, as soldier after soldier poured into the room. "What's going on?"

"Don't worry about it, brother," said Rivera. "You won't be around long enough to care."

"Drop your weapon!" Jenkins repeated. "Drop it right now!"

Rivera looked around at the small army arrayed against him and laughed. "Yeah... probably not gonna do that."

Connor struggled, but couldn't come close to breaking the major's grip. "Wait, wait, wait! I don't understand!"

But Abby did, just as though her brain had been kick-started by her sudden flash-forward. All the pieces fell into place. "He came here to kill you, Connor. It's not the first time he's tried. He sabotaged the boat in Los Angeles. He or his friends were probably the ones who kept my cave paintings from coming to your attention back in the Pleistocene. Divide and conquer. It's been about killing us all along."

"Yeah," said Connor, "but how do you _know_ that?"

Rivera shook his head. "Probably because she's not as dumb as you look. Well done, Abby, but still only part of the puzzle. You won't get the rest in time."

Jenkins took a step forward. "You're not getting out of here. This installation is totally locked down."

"You hear that?" Abby said. "Protocol Seven. Matt's ready for you. Whatever you want, you won't get it."

Rivera arched an eyebrow. "As you observed, _one_ thing I want is Connor Temple dead. I can have that right now."

"Oi, mate!" Connor blinked. "Don't you want to negotiate?"

Rivera's gun dug into the flesh of Connor's neck, silencing him. Abby shared a look with Jenkins. Technically she had no authority here; with no orders issued through the coms from Matt or Becker (a problem of its own, though a secondary one), it was up to the ranking officer, and Abby had no rank. But she was a member of the lead team, with all the status that implied, as well as the wife of the man in danger. And, really, she wasn't about to let anyone else make this call. She could only imagine the look on her face, but it must have been convincing. Jenkins inclined his head: _Your play._

She faced down Major Rivera. "I can't help noticing you're a good deal taller than Connor, and these men are excellent shots. You have three seconds to let him go."

"Or what?" Rivera laughed. "You'll have me shot? _You_, the glorified pet-shop girl?"

"Somebody said I was too compassionate," Abby said, so furious as to seem very calm. "That's what they said: I was going to lose everything because I couldn't make a hard call. So look in my eyes: Do you think I'm in a compassionate mood?"

"Um, honey," Connor said, "that's very sweet, but maybe we should all calm down..."

Rivera stared right back. "Whoever told you that was right. You don't have it in you."

"You should ask your patroness about that. You are with Southfield, right? Helen Cutter's friends? She's dead now. You should take a lesson."

"You see," said the major, "that's why you're going to lose. You're still living in a world where people die. Control time, and you control all that: You have the keys to life and death. And nothing ever dies until we're done with it."

He didn't blink, so Abby did. She fought the terror welling up from her gut to a standstill. "You'd mad. You're just... completely mad."

"Interesting choice of words. You people use 'mad' to mean 'crazy,' right?" Rivera's smile lurked around the edges, but his words were deadly serious. "Where I come from, it just means angry. Hell, yes, I am angry. I'm angry about the friends I left in the Iraqi desert, I'm angry about the ones who killed themselves when they got home. I'm angry at a world that just doesn't care.

"But that was the old world, Abby. New world coming. You can be a part of it, or you can be in the way. It's your call."

_Yes, it is,_ Abby thought. She kept herself perfectly steady, with not a deep breath or the slightest inflection to inform Rivera, as she said: "Take him."

"Hold on," said Connor, "I don't think you can actually-"

_Bang._ Jenkins fired exactly one round, and what was left of Major Rivera slid down the wall, while Connor staggered away, into Abby's arms. She looked down at the major's body, too horrified by what she'd wrought to look away, but then-

She was looking at nothing. Rivera's body faded away in golden light, much like an anomaly. And exactly like the time-travel effect she'd seen from Matt's future double.

Connor was trembling; Abby hugged him tight. She began to feel sick. He'd been so sure it didn't matter- from the beginning, Rivera had conducted himself like a man with nothing on the line at all. _Nothing dies until we're done with it,_ he said.

The last five minutes had been the most terrifying of Abby's life, but the thing she couldn't stop thinking was: _What if it isn't over?_

* * *

In the Hub, Matt was hearing confused reports about a confrontation he'd been too far out of position to influence. With coms down, he and Becker were trying to keep abreast of the situation using the antiquated solution of mobile phones, while Lester prowled in the background like a caged panther, periodically demanding information.

Becker looked up sharply. "The intruder's down. Connor's okay. Good work."

Matt frowned as a different sort of information found his ear: "We've got a situation near the server room, too. Someone's hurt. Say again?" Matt felt his stomach twist in knots as the fellow whose intercom was actually working relayed the news. He looked at Becker. "It's Jess."

"On my way!" said Becker, all but vaulting the Hub to get to the door.

With Becker gone, Matt shared a grim look with Lester. "You're right, it's strange. Why go to the trouble to infiltrate us, make it obvious he was up to no good... and then get himself killed? Unless..."

"Yes?" Lester prompted.

Matt swore under his breath. "It's a feint! He was keeping our eyes on him while the real attack came elsewhere. The target could have been Jess, or..."

Before he even finished his thought, Lester's mobile was out and dialling a new number. Matt approached close enough to overhear. "Jenny? Report to the Hub immediately. There's been..."

"Jenny isn't available right now," said a gruff, Scottish-tinged voice on the other end of the line. "I'm sorry, James. I didn't want this."

"Newman? Newman, what the hell do you think-"

The line went dead with Lester in mid-sentence. Five minutes later, a guard found Jennifer Lewis-Miller's mobile and coms unit discarded in a corner and a door on the lowest level of the ARC forced open by someone who knew what they were doing.

In more ways than Matt knew how to count, they'd been made to look like amateurs. If he saw one bright spot, it was that the next move was his, and he knew what it was.

One way or another, someone was going to pay for compromising the ARC on his watch.


	4. Act Three

**Primeval 6.6 **("Shadow of a Man")

by qjay

___DISCLAIMER: Primeval was created by Adrian Hodges and Tim Haines. It does not belong to me. This is not-for-profit fan fiction, and no infringement is intended._

**Act Three**

If Jennifer Lewis-Miller's day wasn't the worst being experienced by anyone from the ARC, it was definitely in contention for the worst of her life. That it was a stiffer competition than she would have liked was a problem for another time.

Today's problem was rather more immediate: Jenny had placed a call to her contact at the _Guardian_, only to find that no reporter had called her, and no one was thinking of reviving the story she'd worked so hard to quash. This had seemed very mysterious until Christopher Newman showed up. He had a backpack slung over his shoulder and pointed a gun at her, informing her they were going on a trip.

And what a trip! Not to some lovely place like Paris or Athens; no, their trip was down into the sewer system below the city. Newman helpfully relieved her of any communications devices before they left, thus freeing her mind from dwelling on any possibility of rescue. This left her more free time to ponder her imminent death, which seemed to be the last item on the day's awful agenda.

At first, Jenny couldn't even get Newman to talk about it. She didn't know where they were going, or why he'd suddenly turned on her after weeks of grudgingly becoming almost civil. When they'd been walking for nearly half an hour, Jenny dug in her heels; enough of this was more than enough.

"Look, I don't understand!" she said, doing her best to ignore the muzzle of the gun. "If you'll just tell me what this is all about..."

Newman grunted, a look close to disgust on his face that didn't seem to have been caused by the regrettable ambiance of the sewers. "It's just another job. It's just... necessary, that's all."

Jenny sighed. "And here I thought we were getting on so much better."

"Consider this a bump in our relationship." He gestured with the gun. "Sorry. Keep moving."

Jenny did move forward, but she didn't give up. Without turning back toward Newman, she continued, "I suppose you know you're betraying people who would have risked their lives for you? Does that not matter at all?"

"No one's ever given me anything," Newman said. "No one's going to take it away, either."

She stopped, curious about that, and he pushed her forward- reached out and shoved her in the small of the back. Jenny stumbled and nearly fell into stinking water, several metres below the path they were on. Newman reached out to steady her, and his aim shifted.

That was enough for Jenny. She planted her feet, turned, and punched him in the face. Newman staggered backward with a bloodied nose, surprised and impressed- but he did not drop the gun.

Jenny decided to chance it; he was staggered, perhaps his aim would be off. She turned to run-

A terrible, throaty squawk echoed through the tunnel. It seemed to come out of the darkness somewhere ahead of her. Jenny froze; Newman grabbed her from behind and pulled her back. But he didn't look to be recapturing her as much as guarding her; he put himself and the weapon between Jenny and the source of that sound.

"What was...?" she whispered.

"_Deinonychus_," Newman said. "'The Terrible Claw.' Basically a big raptor. Some of them may have wandered away from our trap by now, so I really wouldn't make your escape that way."

Jenny scoffed. "Why should I care whether it kills me, or you do?"

"If you'd seen those things kill, you'd care." Newman shuddered. "Besides, no one's gonna kill you. You're far too valuable."

"But I'm not valuable!" Jenny insisted. "I'm really not! I'm not even supposed to be here at all!"

"That's right, you're not," Newman agreed. "Claudia Brown is."

If Jenny thought he might alleviate some of her astonishment and frustration, she was sadly mistaken, at least for the present. Newman grabbed her arm and pulled her down a side tunnel, no less dark or inhospitable, while the cries of predatory creatures continued to echo all around them...

* * *

When Becker finally caught sight of Jess, she was already on a stretcher, being wheeled out to a waiting ambulance by a nurse from the infirmary and one of his own guards. The latter, a fellow named Stevens, was new to the ARC- bright enough, but too inexperienced for Becker to put on the Protocol Seven detail. Now he was glad of that; from the reports he'd gotten en route, if Emily's call for backup had gone unheeded a few seconds longer...

Speaking of Emily, she was running alongside the stretcher- dishevelled, haunted, and covered in bloody which didn't seem to be her own. Jess was streaked with blood, too, and very pale. Becker doubled his pace to catch up to them...

"Oh, God, Jess... what happened?"

Emily hissed. "Creature attack- inside the ARC. How is that even possible?"

"We were set up," Becker heard himself say, although he remained slightly too stunned to feel the rage that bubbled beneath the surface of his fear.

"But Matt was with you the whole time?"

Becker blinked. "What? I don't-"

Emily seized his arm and said with sudden urgency, "_Tell me Matt was with you the whole time_!"

"Yes, of course he was," Becker said, on the point of pushing past this interference to get to Jess...

But Emily released him and turned away in frustration. She seemed to have heard precisely what she expected to hear, but didn't know whether it made things better or worse. Either way, she was angry- with the creatures, with herself, with everything.

Becker didn't blame her a bit. He took Jess's hand and smoothed back her tousled hair as he walked alongside the stretcher. "Jess, can you hear me, darling? Jess!"

She murmured something unintelligible, but that was all. Becker had seen a lot of injuries in his time, and now something new began to emerge from beneath the panic: the certainty that her wounds were very bad, possibly worse than he'd seen anyone survive...

He turned to the nurse- Paulsen? Perry? Her name started with a P... or not. Becker didn't care, at the moment. "What's her condition?"

Becker saw his own pessimism reflected in the nurse's eyes, but she only said, "It's nothing we can deal with here."

They turned a corner; Emily popped up at the other side of the stretcher, so they could both escort Jess outside. She seemed to be holding herself together by force of will. Becker had seen his share of battlefield trauma, too. He did his best not to picture what it must have been like, and did not entirely succeed...

Becker leaned down and touched Jess's cheek; it felt cold and clammy, and her blood got on his hands, as well. "You're going to be all right, understand? We're going to fix you right up. Just stay with us. Stay with me, please..."

The ambulance was already in position as they pushed through the doors. The nurse counted three; she and Stevens lifted Jess's stretcher into the ambulance, and Becker began to climb inside with them...

Emily touched his shoulder. "What do you think you're doing?"

"I'm going with her!"

"No, you're not," Emily said, gently pulling him back. "I'll stay with her. You're going back in there to find out who did this."

Becker already had an excellent suspect in mind, but that was beside the point, and said so. "You don't understand. I can't..."

"I really do understand," Emily said, as gently as possible. "Matt needs you right now."

"No, I don't- look, nothing matters right now except-"

"It does matter," she said, relentlessly rational. "Connor was attacked, too, which means it's not just Jess; everyone might be in danger. It's your job to protect them. That matters, Becker."

The nurse climbed into the ambulance and turned back to them. "Make a decision. We've got to go."

"Becker," Emily said, "she'll be all right. I'll stay with her, I promise."

Becker started to object once more- but above all the other things he was feeling, his primary instinct, honed through many years of discipline, was duty. He stepped back, deferring to Emily- and _then_ the rage seeped through the cracks in his resolve.

"If Newman did this," he said, "I'm going to kill him."

He expected another objection, but Emily met his eyes and nodded as she climbed into the ambulance. "Good."

It was an odd sort of kinship to form, a polite consensus that murder seemed an agreeable course of action, to be pursued with all due speed. They looked into each other for a moment, and each saw their depths of determination and anger matched in the other.

The doors closed between them; the ambulance speeded off with lights blinking and flashing. Becker was left alone in the car park, staring after them, with Jess's blood on his hands.

* * *

Back at the Hub, James Lester had only heard of Jess's condition, and if his rage wasn't quite a match for Becker's, it was a thing to be reckoned with. He felt as though someone had broken into his home and assaulted his own daughter; which, in a sense, was exactly what had happened.

It was enough to strain even Lester's formidable reserve, which was unfortunate, because now happened to be when he needed it the the most. He still had a host of things to deal with- not least the safety of Jenny Lewis, his closest colleague from his time at the ARC. If that wasn't the same as _best friend_, it was as close to one as Lester was likely to know.

He wasn't ready to admit the whole thing was his fault for taking on Newman- he suspected that was the case, but he couldn't admit it and function at the same time. Besides, there were good reasons for using Newman, reasons unknown even to the present version of Matt Anderson, although his future self had apparently worked it out. Lester wondered if it wasn't time to complete the loop and tell Matt everything... but Matt, at the moment, had his own problems.

"He set us up!" the team leader raged. "From the moment he got here and compromised our security, he knew we'd run a drill to fix it! He needed us to install new security protocols so we wouldn't think it strange when our systems started failing! He probably even reasoned we'd do it the day Connor and Abby returned to duty. This was worked out precisely."

"He knows us very well," Lester sighed.

"Yes, he does. If I haven't said so already, thanks so much for bringing him aboard!"

That was harsh, although fully deserved. Lester studied his shoes and took a deep breath. "Perhaps it's time I told you why..."

"Save it. We've still got raptors in the server room." Matt pointed to a couple of Becker's guards, just arriving back at their stations, as he aimed himself for the door. "You and you, with me. Let's go."

One of the soldiers tossed Matt and EMD; he checked its charge and braced it against his shoulder- and stopped when James Lester got in his way. He waited impatiently.

"Do you..." Lester cleared his throat. "Will you need any help?"

Matt grunted. "Funny time to get your hands dirty."

"Not at all," Lester said. "They're going to pay for this."

Matt finally looked at him, and maybe- somewhere past the frustration and horror of the day- maybe Lester saw the hint of a smile. Matt clasped him on the shoulder and shook his head.

"We'll get Jenny back. Just let me do my job."

"Go," Lester said, and stepped aside.

Matt marched through the doors with the guards; not for the first time, Lester was left behind, reduced to hoping a leader of the ARC's field team was as clever as he thought he was...

* * *

Connor Temple sat down beside his locker, shaken to the core, while around him, Becker's guards performed a final sweep to clear up whatever mischief Rivera and Newman had concocted. Connor would have to be a part of that, too; with Jess apparently down, he was the only one who knew the computer core well enough to remove any tampering. But at the moment, he could barely think straight.

He kept flashing back- not to the encounter with Rivera, which was bad enough, but to Abby's eyes when he fell. There was just... nothing there. Connor had always known Abby's fierce loyalty to the people and things she cared about came with a significant dark side. He'd seen it in the Cretaceous, when she thought her brother was in danger, when she attacked an actual Medieval swordsman unarmed to defend a wounded creature... but he'd never thought she could be pushed _that_ far. He couldn't help thinking it was his fault somehow.

While he was thinking about her, Abby sat down and put an arm around him. "Are you all right?"

"Yup. Think so. Yeah." Connor paused just long enough to make sure that was sort of mostly true before looking at her. "Are _you_?"

"As long as you're all right, I'm fine."

She started to hug him, but Connor pulled away. "That man fought with us, Abby, just the other day. He was one of Danny's friends!"

"He was never anyone's friend," Abby said.

"Yeah, but... to have him_ killed_..."

From the way her eyes shone, Abby was probably even more shaken by the experience than he was; being Abby, that meant she had to play it off as irrelevant.

"I didn't do anything," she said. "Rivera was a fanatic. He wasn't going to let you live. Jenkins saw that, and took the shot he had to take."

"But you gave the order."

"Becker's men don't take orders from me!" Abby was clearly rationalising, it simply wasn't clear whether or not she knew it. "It was the right decision. If Becker had been here, he'd have done the same thing, and you wouldn't be complaining."

Connor looked straight at her and shook his head. "Becker's had training. He's used to this. You're not supposed to be a soldier."

"Don't tell me what I'm _supposed _to be, all right?" Abby sighed and looked away. "Look, Connor... what happened was bad, but it could have been a lot worse. I know we wanted to do things Cutter's way, peacefully, but that might not be possible now."

"Is that what Matt's double told you?"

Abby made a face- actually, a series of faces. Betrayal, then anger, then determined indifference. "I don't know what you mean."

That was one denial too many for Connor. "Come on, I'm not stupid! I know why you've been clinging to me! Abby..." He took a deep breath, met her blue eyes, and shrugged. "If it's going to happen, then it is. Cutter and Stephen faced it."

"_Not_ you," Abby said, tears in her eyes. "I am not gonna lose you like that. _Never_."

"Oh, darlin'..." Connor reached up and traced the line of her cheekbone, ran his fingers into her hair, and drew her close. "There was a time I would have given my whole world to have you feel that way. But now I need you to promise it won't happen again. You'll never do anything like that again. Not for me. I need you to promise... you'll let go."

Abby knew what he was thinking; she grabbed his hand and held it tight. "You first."

Connor couldn't help but smile. When he thought about it, he realised letting go of anything- especially each other- had never been their strong point. But it did have certain compensations...

"Look," said Abby, struggling for normalcy, "we'll stop it. We always do. After all we've seen, don't you think it's possible to change the future?"

"Yeah, and I think you should," Connor said, "as you as you don't change yourself."

Abby rested her head against his shoulder, and they stayed like that for a long time. He didn't know which of them had won the argument. Maybe no one. Maybe they'd simply realised it made no sense to fight each other when they had no shortage of other enemies. For the time being, it would have to do.

* * *

Matt posted a soldier on either side of the server room door, with himself standing before it. He performed a silent count, kicked the door in, and aimed his EMD.

An anomaly still sparkled in the room, or something like an anomaly- it looked weak, a bit ragged, as though it struggled to maintain its shape. Matt heard the distant call of some creature coming through it, but the thing that had wounded Jess was not in evidence.

"Lester, it's gone," he said into his mobile. "They must have gone back through the anomaly."

"Back to the Jurassic? Cretaceous? Dinosaur Land, what have you?"

Matt started to agree, but then another sound reached his ear: A soft, dripping noise. Water was leaking out of the anomaly, puddling on the floor beneath it, and trickling across the room almost as far as Matt's boots. He caught a distinctive odour and wrinkled his nose.

"I don't think so..."

* * *

The sewer tunnels didn't get any better as Jenny and Newman traversed one after another, but they did get darker, more confusing, and even less hospitable. Jenny began to suspect the awful scent of the place wasn't only the usual; there was a good deal of death mixed in, too. She would have liked to keep moving, but periodically Newman would stop, remove something from his pack, and affix it to a wall or entranceway. The things he left behind moulded like plastic and were attached to wires at odd angles...

"Are those explosives?" Jenny demanded. "You're going to kill the team when they come after you?"

"Let's say _someone's_ in for a bad day," Newman said. "I've been working out this route for months. The insurance policy is already in place; I'm just making sure it's comprehensive."

Jenny was about to call him any number of unpleasant names, all of which were too good for him, but then another distant shriek made her hesitate. "I wish they wouldn't do that..."

Newman looked up from his work. "They're hunting. In their minds, all of this is their territory now, and they're among the cleverest dinosaurs who ever lived. They can communicate... probably better than some people. They'll have cleared out anything living pretty quickly."

Jenny rolled her eyes. "So naturally, you set a trap to draw them in..."

"The people I work for can't create an anomaly from scratch, like Connor Temple. Helen didn't leave them that gift. But they can predict anomalies, even very small ones that barely open and can't be detected by the naked eye. And they can... manipulate them, re-route them, after a fashion. I located a suitable anomaly and moved it where I needed it. Then I rang the dinner bell."

"Why not just take us directly to them, then?" Jenny said, looking around. "Why waste time in this dismal place?"

Newman looked up and grinned. "Told them I wanted a face-to-face meeting. Said I didn't trust them; it's true enough. One way or another, they're going to give me what I deserve and then leave me alone. This 'dismal place' evens the odds."

Jenny frowned at the explosives. So, they were meant for Southfield as much as for the team. That was an interesting bit of information. It sounded as though Newman might still be susceptible to reason, if she could only find the right lever...

"If you don't like them," she asked, "why are you doing this?"

"I told you, to get paid. Isn't that enough?"

"If that were the only reason." Jenny shrugged. "I don't think it is."

Newman finished what he was doing and gestured with the gun again; they came upon a series of branching corridors, and Newman indicated she should lead the way down the left-hand one. Jenny did, reluctantly, not that the décor improved. She thought he'd forgotten their conversation, but then he started again, out of nowhere:

"If you still harbour any hopes of redeeming me, let me paint you a picture: I wasn't only told to capture you. Your friend Jess was the secondary target. I was ordered to kill her. Of course, I didn't stick around to check, but I'm fairly sure I succeeded."

Jenny's breath caught; she tried to wrap her mind around the thought of the bright, friendly young woman who coordinated the team's operations being... like so many of her former co-workers at the ARC. It didn't seem to connect; she couldn't believe it. She couldn't believe Newman was telling her the whole truth about it.

"But... you_ liked_ Jess!" she said. "If there was anyone you liked, it was Jess! How could you do that?"

Newman muttered something. Jenny asked him to repeat it. For a long moment, she didn't think he would answer; then he stopped and whirled on her, gesturing angrily with the gun. Jenny didn't know if he was furious with her, or with himself.

"_I said, I had no choice!_ I did want to save Jess. I wish I had. But I couldn't let them see me turn against them. Not openly, not like that. They don't tolerate that."

"They'd kill you?" Jenny guessed.

He laughed. "If they only killed people, it wouldn't be so bad. They can make me..._ un-happen_, Jenny. They can make it as though I never lived at all."

"Just like Claudia Brown," she murmured. "That's why they want me. I'm like a weapon... no, not a weapon. I'm the crime scene, the evidence. I was made into something else, and that's dangerous. That's the sort of power they're after, and they want it only for themselves."

Newman stared at her. Then he nodded. Then he looked away.

Jenny sighed. "I don't understand you. I never have. Sometimes you're so much like him, and then-"

"Like _who_?" Newman took a dangerous step forward.

"I think you know," she said, unperturbed. "And then sometimes you're... like this. If I'm going to spend the rest of my life being experimented on by people who can make me _un-happen,_ I think I deserve to know. Who are you, exactly? What are you?"

Newman wouldn't or couldn't look at her. He seemed on the verge of telling her the truth. Then there was another shriek, and the sounds of repeated gunfire from one of the other tunnels. Newman drew her further along the tunnel until they found an alcove to hide in.

"Watch your step!" said a distant voice. "There could be more of them."

"The targets should be here by now," a deeper voice replied. "Spread out, find them!"

Newman did a double-take in the direction of the voice and hissed. "Bastard! He sent a whole backup team! Come on, this way!"

He pulled Jenny out of the alcove and hurried down the tunnel. She supposed the devil she knew was marginally preferable to the ones she didn't. But she wasn't ready to just follow his lead after what he'd told her.

"Wait, now! Just wait a minute! Are we running toward your friends, or away from them?"

"Haven't really decided yet." He delivered the line with something close to his usual sarcasm, but then his eyes grew wide and he pointed at something past Jenny's shoulder. "Why don't we run away from _that_, and decide later?"

Jenny half-turned to see a large, raptor-like creature standing in the entrance to the tunnel. Its cruel, reptilian eyes searched the dark, then seemed to zero in on her.

"That's fair," Jenny said, and they ran.

The Deinonychus lowered its head and charged them, full-speed. Newman fired a couple of off-balance rounds to slow it down, but it kept coming.

As they bolted from the tunnel, they heard something else past the sounds of the creature: The team from Southfield, coming up behind it. Every time Newman heard the deeper voice, he scowled. Finally Jenny asked him what was so bad about it.

"Oh, never mind," he replied, huffing and puffing with the effort of their race. "It's a sort of private joke..."

Jenny wouldn't have gotten that joke, even if she'd been in better humour. She probably wouldn't have gotten it if she'd seen their pursuers filing through the tunnel after them, with Major Tony Rivera, former U.S. Marine, in the lead. There was no reason she should have.

After all, she hadn't seen him die.


	5. Act Four

**Primeval 6.6 **("Shadow of a Man")

by qjay

___DISCLAIMER: Primeval was created by Adrian Hodges and Tim Haines. It does not belong to me. This is not-for-profit fan fiction, and no infringement is intended._

* * *

**Act Four**

In the control centre of the ARC, surrounded by banks of equipment that still weren't working quite right and the Hub that had been tended by a fallen friend, Matt Anderson prepared his team for war. He stood with Lester and Becker, facing a contingent of the latter's security forces, and held up a small, silver orb- not much to look at, but apparently all too lethal.

"We found this at the site of the anomaly," he said. "We believe it's some sort of beacon, drawing in the creatures that attacked Jess."

Outwardly emotionless, Becker continued his thought. "Based on the forced entryway below, we believe Newman's made his escape through the sewer system. We've uploaded a full set of schematics into your sat-nav, so follow them if you get lost."

"We've been working on something that will reclaim the edge from Newman," Matt said, as much to interject a moment of optimism as anything else, "but for now, he's a step ahead of us. He's been planning this and he knows what he's doing. Don't leave yourselves open."

"We don't believe he intends to hurt Jenny," Lester said, "but we must do nothing ourselves to put her in danger. Newman is unstable and extremely dangerous. He must be approached with caution."

"But," Becker said, too happy to interrupt that thought, "if you get a clear shot at him, you are authorised to use all due force to protect our own. Understood?"

The security team's responses ranged from _Yes, sir_ to_ Absolutely, sir_, to _Understood completely, sir._ They were good soldiers. They'd do their part. Matt only hoped their leaders were deserving of them. He felt like he'd been found wanting much too often in this game so far.

Before the team could be dismissed, the doors opened, admitting Connor and Abby. Whatever they'd been through with Major Rivera, they'd buried it like veteran combatants and showed no hint of being out of place as they approached the security team.

"Sorry we're late," Abby said. "Miss anything?"

"You're just in time for the fun part."

Matt gestured, and a sergeant handed off a couple of EMD rifles, which they prepared for action nearly as quickly as Matt would have done himself. Whatever their protestations, it was clear to Matt that Connor and Abby had more than a little soldier in them by now, although he wasn't sure that was a good thing.

Once locked and loaded, Connor drifted toward Becker and lowered his voice. "How's Jess?"

"We don't know yet..."

Connor clasped his friend on the shoulder. Becker gave a curt nod and turned aside. Meanwhile, an aide came running up and delivered a message to Lester.

"The Minister's office professes complete ignorance- which isn't difficult to believe," Lester said. "They can't reach Danny's team at all. Apparently the Americans are having technical difficulties of the sort that continue to plague us."

"Yeah, sorry," Connor said. "I only had time to get the coms running. I'll sort out the rest, soon as we return."

"Have them keep trying," Matt said to Lester. "If Rivera was a double agent, Danny and any loyal friends he's got are in serious danger."

Connor hissed. "I sent Duncan there, just this morning..."

"He's with Sharon," Abby reminded him. "She's really good. She'll keep him safe."

"Yeah..." Connor said, though it wasn't clear he believed it.

_And why should he?_ Matt thought._ I used to think we were pretty good, too, and look what's happened..._

Becker, having mostly remained apart from this conversation, now grew tired of waiting and slung his rifle over his shoulder. "The longer we wait, the colder Jenny's trail grows."

"I'm not losing someone else to this bastard," Matt said, to the team at large. "This ends today. Move out."

The security team filed through the doors. Matt caught Becker's arm as he moved to follow. "If you need to be with Jess..."

"I will be," Becker said, "when we've caught him."

Matt nodded, accepting that. He could guess where Becker's thoughts were tending, but he didn't see a way around it without side-lining his best soldier. Besides, it wasn't as though the rest of the team _didn't_ want Newman dead; this sort of blood feud tended to get personal for everyone. He would have to trust Becker not to cross the line- whether he believed that was likely or not.

When Becker followed his men, it was time for Matt's other concern. He fell into step with Connor and Abby. "The thing Becker and I set in motion this morning... will it work?"

Connor shrugged. "The computer's crunching it now. We'll know soon. Be sort of fitting, wouldn't it? Jess helped write the program we're using."

"Yeah," Matt sighed. "Hell of a first day back."

"We've had worse," said Abby, and she stepped past him to follow the others.

Connor offered a bit of a gallows grin. "I wish she were kidding, but we actually have. I faced a_ Giganotosaurus_ with Jenny once. I owe her. This day can't end like the others. Not this time."

Matt clasped his shoulder. "Not if we can help it."

Connor hurried to catch Abby. Matt turned and shared a long look with Lester. The ARC's director nodded to him, and he returned it with all solemnity. Then he quickened his own pace to join his team.

_Not this time,_ Matt thought. _As time-travellers, we know better than anyone that history tends to repeat. If we intend to prevent that, there can't be any mistakes. I won't allow them._

_This time, we do it right. If Newman thinks he can best us again, he's very welcome to try..._

* * *

A pair of Deinonychus rushed Jenny from either side, with jaws snapping and claws outstretched. She turned and ran, while Newman stood behind and fired off a couple more shots- which he claimed were worse than useless, since they alerted the Southfield team to their position, but which he seemed to enjoy taking anyway, just to prove he could stand down the dinosaurs' charge.

Finally he lost the game of chicken and ran after her. Jenny had half a thought of losing him, but couldn't make any progress in the dark, confusing tunnels. She could hear the creatures, not far behind her, and momentarily froze, unsure which direction they were coming from-

"This way!" Newman grabbed her wrist and pulled her down a branching tunnel. Since there was a Deinonychus approximately four centimetres behind him, Jenny was not inclined to delay.

Soon enough, she saw what he was going for, anyway: The tunnel through which they were running was not familiar to her, but the lump of plastic and wire stuck above the doorway certainly was; it was one of the tunnels Newman had booby-trapped. They only had to make it a little further...

They skidded to a halt in front of drop, below which was a veritable river of dirty water. There was a metal walkway leading across to another tunnel, but they didn't have time to get there. Even as something on the ground caught Jenny's eye, Newman turned, produced a remote control, and pressed a button with the creatures standing in the doorway.

The sound was nearly deafening in the enclosed, echoing space; Jenny was knocked to hands and knees, which was altogether convenient for her purposes, but the ringing in her ears was annoying. She caught a glimpse of Newman's handiwork, and the man himself surveying it with satisfaction; the tunnel around the pair of Deinonychus had collapsed, leaving them buried in rubble. One of them was down, little more than a pile of feathers and bone, but the other kept struggling, trying to dig itself out.

Newman approached it, brought his pistol up against its skull, and peered into those reptilian eyes. He fired, and the creature dropped. Jenny winced, though she wasn't precisely sure why she should feel any sympathy, and steeled herself as Newman walked back to her.

"There now," he said, offering her a hand up. "Isn't that-"

Jenny let him take her left hand and pull her to her feet. Then her right arm whipped around holding the length of metal pipe she'd spotted on the ground and smashed him across the skull. Newman's gun went flying; he tumbled backward into a puddle of filthy water at the edge of the drop and lifted a hand to massage his bleeding scalp.

He groaned. "Thanks for that, Claudia Brown."

"I _told_ you-"

Jenny drew back the pipe to hit him again; another blow might send him tumbling over the edge, out of all their lives, and good riddance. He didn't seem particularly interested in stopping her. Jenny looked at the pipe, streaked red with blood, scowled, and flung it into the water below before turning on Newman.

"-_not_ to call me that!" She hissed, and heard her own voice bounce back to her. She needed several deep breaths to calm herself. Newman was still just sitting there. "All right. Let's talk."

"Probably not the best idea," Newman said. "If the gunshots weren't enough to track us, our friends certainly will have heard the explosion. They're on their way."

"You've rigged these tunnels with enough explosives to_ kill_ your friends, and us as well. I'm still not sure which side you think you're on."

He grumbled to himself before answering. "I told you, I hadn't decided."

Jenny glowered down at him. "Time is running out, don't you think? Southfield isn't all you've got to worry about. Becker and the others are coming for you, and if you don't give them a good reason to keep you alive, I really don't know what will happen. They adored Jess. _I_ adored Jess. I keep wondering what sort of man could harm such an innocent. But that's my mistake, isn't it? You're not just one sort of man."

"No," Newman said, shaking his head. "No, I'm all sorts of things... now."

"Explain," Jenny said, her tone leaving no room for argument.

The mercenary looked down at his filthy hands, his blood dripping into the puddle around him, before he finally sighed. "Damn damn damn _damn_. All right. You win. Did Nick Cutter ever tell you anything about his father?"

Jenny blinked; it was such a non sequitor, she forgot the pain that usually came with any mention of Nick and dredged up the memory by rote. "I think he was... a teacher or something. A man of books."

"Which my father definitely wasn't," Newman said. "Strange to think, then, Sophia Ross was in love with both of them at one time or another... or perhaps I should say,_ in_ one time or another."

"So you're... Nick's half-brother?"

"It's a little more complicated than that," Newman said. "The people behind Southfield have a machine, a machine built with the knowledge they gained researching cases like Claudia Brown's. This machine constantly peers through anomalies and identifies other paths, worlds that could have been..._ alternate timelines_. Somehow... and I don't understand the mechanics myself... they found me in one, and brought me back here.

"I'm the son Cutter's mother would have had if she'd married my father instead of his. In a sense, I'm the Cutter who could have been. They assumed this would be useful, because I have some of his instincts, some of his brain... but not all. Our experiences were too different. In all the ways that matter, we're strangers. Except..."

"Except?" Jenny prompted.

Newman shook his head. "I tried to escape and they brought me back. That was what you saw in the Pleistocene. For me, that was five years ago, around the time Helen Cutter was interfering with history every day of the week."

Jenny knew the time period well. It was burned into her brain. "When Claudia was erased, you mean. When history changed."

"Just after," Newman said. "Helen and Cutter really mucked up the Universe with that little stunt. It was a blinding stroke of luck for Southfield. Previously they'd only changed small things. Claudia, the ARC- all those large-scale changes proved their theories could be made real. The whole world could be manipulated. But there was one thing they didn't anticipate: Somehow, maybe because of all the anomalies he'd been through, bits of Cutter got 'stuck' in time. And because I was like him- almost the same person- they came to rest on me."

Jenny needed a moment to process what she was hearing. "You have... Nick's memories?"

"Some of them," he sighed. "Jumbled, confused... it was never supposed to happen. But I know you. I know all of you. Connor and Abby, Lester... Stephen Hart. And you. And now Claudia. It's all been coming back, you see. I'm cursed with her memory, just like he was."

Jenny took a few steps closer to Newman; on one level, that was probably dangerous. He might have been concocting a fantastic tale to throw her off her guard. The only trouble was, she knew it was true. She'd known it, somehow, since the moment they met. She reached out to him... and stopped.

"No," she said. "_No_. If you were even _slightly_ Nick- if you knew the first thing about him- you couldn't have hurt Jess. He was a lot of things, but never a killer."

"Don't you see? That's why I did it." Newman looked up at her, strangely lost, almost pleading for understanding. "I hated him. For a long time, I hated you all. Cutter had everything I didn't: an education, a father who wasn't an abusive bastard... and love, the sort of love I've never..." He cleared his throat, unwilling to break down in front of her. "He didn't deserve it. He didn't earn it. This Universe just _gave_ it him, him instead of me, just by chance.

"Of course I wanted to destroy everything he built. Wouldn't you?"

Jenny imagined having to watch as Claudia Brown stole Michael, her friends and family... facing the knowledge that her loved ones preferred another version of herself. Of _course_ she would come to hate Claudia for that. She hated her _now_, just for existing first. Newman's problem was eerily familiar, and it left her feeling sad. Then she realised something.

"You said _wanted_. Past tense. What do you want now?"

"I don't know," Newman said quietly. "Do you know what it's like to have someone else's voice in your head all the time? Telling you what to be, how to feel?"

"Yes," Jenny said. "Yes, I really do."

"Yeah, but you and Claudia... you were pretty similar, really. Cutter loved you both."

Now the familiar pang returned, and Jenny tried to shake it off. "He never said as much."

"Trust me, he did. He could never get away from it, the fact that you and she were so alike, and yet... not. But it was different for me; I wasn't like Cutter. I wasn't his double. I was happy the way I was. And then I realised... he_ did_ earn it. He chose to be a better man." Newman didn't look at her, just stared off into empty darkness, his voice full of empty darkness, too. "The better man is always with me now, constantly reminding me of all I've done. All I can never be. All the mistakes he never would have made. It really is enough to drive you mad.

"But they promised me, you see... they promised if I did this final job, they'd put me back through the machine. They'd take away the bits of Cutter. Send me back where I belong. This Universe, these people... there's no place for me here. I want to go home."

While he was talking, Jenny was looking around the chamber. Near the end of his final sentence, she found what he was looking for: Newman's gun, sitting beside the drop in another puddle. She walked over to it, picked it up, and pointed it at him. She thought about using it- for Jess, and more than that, for_ Nick_- to remove this impostor who had no right to steal his memories. Then a surge of pity overcame her.

She turned the pistol around and offered it to him, grip-first. "So... what are you going to do?"

It was the sort of gamble she thought Nick would have made, trusting the capacity for good to overcome all the selfishness and fear and hatred in the world. It was the sort of gamble that got Nick killed. But the genius of the play was, Newman _knew_ that. He understood the gesture without Jenny saying another word. She was telling him an act of mercy was worth the risk, even if it wasn't likely to work- that anyone could be like Cutter, just by believing it was possible.

She saw in his eyes that he was moved. She thought he'd respond in kind. Then a deep voice echoed from the next chamber, cutting short the moment:

"Over here! This direction!"

Jenny nodded to Newman, urging him to choose while they had time. He climbed to his feet, accepted the gun- and holstered it.

"Think I'll run now," he said. "Care to join me?"

He moved toward the walkway leading to another tunnel. Jenny took a step to follow, but caught herself.

"You need to know something," she said. "This doesn't make up for Jess. I can forgive everything else... but never that. I still hope they catch you. Sorry."

"Well," Newman said philosophically, "at least that would be an ending. Now, come on!"

With the sounds of pursuit drawing closer, they hurried in the other direction, into the dark...

* * *

Far away from the scene of the explosion and the two groups closing in on each other, a third group was getting its search underway. Connor Temple kept close to his wife as they, Matt, Becker, and a handful of soldiers traced Newman's path through the tunnels. Finally, they came to a junction with three branches and stopped.

"Split up," Matt said. "Coms open at all times. If you even think you've seen something, report in. I've got the middle branch."

"You two," Becker said to a pair of soldiers, "with me, on the left. Jenkins, go right with Connor and Abby. Keep an eye on them, understand?"

"Yes, sir..."

Connor wasn't sure he liked being _kept an eye on,_ but he supposed Becker's protectiveness was understandable. Anyway, Jenkins had saved his life earlier and didn't talk too much, which Connor found agreeable because he preferring doing the talking himself. He and Abby followed the soldier down the right-hand tunnel, as instructed.

After a few minutes of groping about in darkness, Matt's voice echoed through the restored coms. "Nothing in the centre so far. All teams check in."

"Nothing here," said Becker, his voice curt and angry. Connor worried about him.

Apparently Matt did, too. "Would you tell me if you'd found him?"

"Only if I couldn't kill him very quickly," Becker said. "So, to answer your question, no."

Matt might not have known what to say to that; what was there? They couldn't do this without Becker, Connor felt sure of that. He tried a nervous laugh, to break the tension.

"Come on, guys. A little optimism..."

"Not much use for it lately," Matt said. "If anyone's got a good-luck charm, now's the time for it..."

Connor noticed Abby, unconsciously twisting the ring on her finger. It had quickly become her talisman, although Connor still thought the evidence suggested the thing was more bad luck than good. He feared it might be causing worse problems, as well.

"You're not gonna take that off, are you?"

Abby frowned at him. "I think the secret's out, Connor. Are you trying to un-marry me?"

"No, no, it's just... I notice you reacting, eh, _quickly_ to things. _Really_ quickly, actually, and I thought..."

"Quiet, everyone!" Matt snapped. "We've found something."

Connor stopped. Around his team, there was only darkness. But he heard echoing footsteps through Matt's coms, followed by an ominous silence.

"What have you got?" Becker prompted after a moment. "I can be at your position in..."

"Stay there," Matt said. He grunted slightly, an exertion. Probably kneeling down to inspect his find. "Deinonychus corpse, riddled with bullets. Unless Newman had a machine gun on him, we're not alone down here."

"I don't like the sound of that," said Becker.

Then Connor heard a sound he liked even less: something growling at the edge of his hearing. At first, he thought he and Abby were being stalked. Then he realised it was coming through coms. A moment later, he heard a loud vocalisation, a_ screeching_, from the same source...

Abby said, "Is that a...?"

"Raptor," Connor said, though he supposed it might have been rhetorical. "Big one."

"It won't be alone." Abby was already moving, along with their military escort. "Matt, hang on! We're on our way!"

"You won't have time," said the team leader's voice. "Besides being fine hunters, Deinonychus were also scavengers. Something's come to inspect the kill..."

Connor started running, too. He heard the screeching and then EMD bolts... and then the coms went out. Maybe Matt fell and lost his earpiece; maybe it got wet and shorted out. Maybe Connor's rushed clearing of the system hadn't been quite sufficient. None of those possibilities sounded good, so he ran faster. Then he heard something else, closer at hand, coming from a side chamber they were approaching. Something or someone banging on one of the myriad metal pipes.

Abby and Jenkins slid to a halt in front of the chamber. Inside was a large pipe that came in one wall and went out through the ceiling. There was no doubt the banging was coming from inside- or that it was an irregular, unsteady sound, not mechanical. The kind of sound made by something living. They entered the room cautiously, Jenkins putting himself between his charges and the sound.

"Stand back," he said, and drew his pistol.

He fired three rounds, shooting the bolts off a section of pipe. It collapsed, and the pipe broke open, spilling sewage into the chamber- not to mention a middle-aged, ruddy fellow practically covered in the stuff. He might have been in there a while; he looked haggard and terrified.

Connor helped him stand and thumped him on the back until he could breathe. "Steady! Steady, mate! You're gonna be all right!"

"What happened to you?" Abby asked.

"My name's Tom Harper," the man coughed. "I'm the foreman down here. Monsters... lizard/bird things killed most of my crew. I heard men screaming; it was all I could do to hide. I was a coward..."

"Trust me, nobody's brave the first time they meet a dinosaur," Connor said, which was the sane and sober truth.

"You'll be all right," Abby said. "We're gonna get you out of here."

But Tom shook his head. "No, no... you don't understand. There are others who got away! Follow me!"

Without waiting for them to agree, he shook off their hands and ran toward the door. Connor shared a look with the others; Tom's story didn't sound right. If he ran away, how did he know what happened to the others? Did he just happen to bump into them? Or... what?

"That was a quick recovery."

Jenkins cleared his throat. "If there's even a chance of civilians in harm's way down here, I can't leave them."

"Yeah," Abby sighed. "Let's be careful, though."

Connor seconded that, though in all his time at the ARC, he wasn't sure he'd ever actually seen anyone be careful. He wondered what it would be like. Nice, he imagined.

Grudgingly and not as carefully as he would have liked, they set off after Tom.

* * *

They'd been running in the dark for so long, Jenny had lost all sense of where they were going. Newman seemed to know, but it was difficult to tell whether the layout of the sewers was burned into his mind thanks to long practice, or he was just good at looking decisive.

After a while, the sounds of pursuit slackened. Jenny strained her ears and heard occasional hunting calls (and something like electricity hissing and popping- EMD bolts?) but no footsteps. She was beginning to feel they'd really lost the Southfield team, but Newman kept them going for some time afterward, tunnel after tunnel. Finally, she had to stop and rest.

And then- right _then_, just when she felt they were safe- that was when she heard footsteps and talking in the very next chamber. She turned to bolt, but ran up against a stone wall.

She glared at Newman. "Fine job of escaping you've done. Is this one of your traps?"

"Yeah, it is," he said, "the final trap. You can't run from these people."

Jenny was about to ask if he'd finally made up his mind, but he solved the puzzle by stepping in front of her and aiming his pistol into the darkness spreading out before them.

"Whatever happens," he said, "don't interfere."

Jenny nodded. Then, impulsively, she murmured, "I loved him, too. Nick. I really did."

She thought she saw the outline of a smile on Newman's face. The footsteps grew louder, and suddenly three shapes burst out of the darkness. Jenny gasped and reached for Newman's arm to make him lower the gun. But he surprised her by dropping it on the ground.

"Hello, there," he said. "I thought it'd be you. I was just telling Jenny... I was foolish to run."

Captain Becker took a step closer, flanked by two security guards from the ARC. He looked down at Newman's discarded weapon. Then, to Jenny's further surprise, he dropped his EMD on the ground and crackled his knuckles.

"Why don't you lads take a walk?" Becker said to the guards, his tone soft and conversational and just slightly mad. "I won't need long with him."

The guards shared a glance and stepped back into the shadows. Newman fell into defensive posture as Becker advanced. Jenny suddenly understood they'd been going in a circle. From the moment she offered him the gun, he'd been leading them back toward the ARC to face up to what he'd done to Jess. She felt strangely proud, and then concerned.

Why go through the formality of a fight? If he was content to be captured, Newman could simply surrender with hands above his head. Then Jenny realised she wasn't sure Newman intended on returning to the ARC alive, and she was _quite_ sure Becker wouldn't mind if he didn't...


	6. Act Five

**Primeval 6.6 **("Shadow of a Man")

by qjay

___DISCLAIMER: Primeval was created by Adrian Hodges and Tim Haines. It does not belong to me. This is not-for-profit fan fiction, and no infringement is intended._

* * *

**Act Five**

The terrifying thing was, Becker didn't even look angry.

Jenny thought he was, at first. When he took his first few steps toward Newman, Jenny tried to get between them, to restore order. "Becker... now, calm down! I know you're angry- you have every right. But just calm down!"

Then he stepped closer, and she got a good look into his eyes. They were strangely peaceful, more _certain_ than furious, the look of a man who'd just received confirmation he'd been right all along, and who knew precisely what needed doing next. Jenny didn't think any words of hers would deter him- not empty words, certainly. Words couldn't do anything for Jess.

Newman touched Jenny's arm, motioned her back. "Let him come. This has been brewing for a while."

Jenny didn't know what to do. She didn't think Becker would go through her to get to Newman, but she wasn't actually certain, any more than she was certain she wanted to defend him. When she hesitated, Newman moved more definitely to push her away.

He grinned at Becker. "Come on, soldier boy. Might do us both some good."

"Maybe not as much for you," Becker said, and struck.

Newman blocked the first blow and tried to turn Becker's momentum against him, but the security captain followed through, whirled, and knocked Newman's legs out from under him. He was back on his feet in a moment, but off-balance, and Becker stepped in quickly to deliver a solid punch to the body. Jenny heard something, probably a rib, go _crunch_.

That was the first broken bone.

Newman caught himself, threw a roundhouse punch, and Becker caught the arm, twisted it behind him, _snapped_ it out of joint. He slammed Newman against the foul, cold wall of the chamber. Newman drove his elbow backward, into Becker's midsection. When Becker stumbled, he got himself righted, turned, and connected with a solid punch to the jaw.

Becker wasn't even fazed; he stepped back and circled around, a surgeon seeking the best place to cut. Newman awaited him, but he had a wounded arm to protect. Becker feinted to that side, then stepped in quickly from the other and caught Newman leaning. A rabbit punch to the kidneys nearly felled him, and while his weight was concentrated on one leg, Becker lashed out with a kick, all but crushing his knee with a sickening _crunch._

Newman dropped like a sack full of lead. It took him longer this time to haul himself to his feet, and he leaned heavily against the wall. Becker stood back, implacable, waiting.

Jenny suddenly understood he could have done this at any time, to any opponent the ARC had faced in the last four years. In time, he would feel the emotional pain of what Newman had done- but right now, it was probably liberating, in a way. That was where the peaceful look came from. The part of Becker he kept tightly under control, reserved only for the battlefield, had been set free.

Another time, under other circumstances, it might have been a contest. Newman was well-trained himself. If he'd had something to battle for- if Becker hadn't been driven to batter him down with machine-like efficiency- it might have been a hell of a fight. Jenny thought Becker still would have won, but not like this. This wasn't a brawl; it was a slow execution.

Deprived of mobility, Newman threw himself at Becker, grappled with him, tried to wrestle him to the ground. The two men battled for leverage. Newman got a hand up under Becker's guard, and Jenny almost thought he could force a stalemate...

But no. Becker broke the hold with a sudden lunge, his skull connecting with Newman's nose- another awful noise- and pushed the mercenary back against the wall His hands dug into Newman's throat while the other tried unsuccessfully to push them away. They grappled like that, white-knuckled, and then Newman began to choke.

"Becker, that's enough!" Jenny snapped. "You've got him! Now stop!"

But Becker dug in harder, lifting Newman almost off his feet as he throttled him against the wall. Now there was something else in those eyes, something dark and deadly, and Jenny didn't have the faintest clue how to deter it...

* * *

Matt Anderson picked himself up off the ground and threw away his useless coms. It had a long way to fall, as he found himself on a platform raised above the dark water flowing somewhere below. The first of three Deinonychus had pounced at him and his two soldiers, forcing Matt to throw himself flat. It left him a ripped shirt and a shallow slash across the chest as a reminder that it really had come too close. Not that its snapping jaws, just about a metre away, were especially forgettable.

It started to move in again, but Matt lifted his EMD and struck it with a couple of bolts. It dropped at the edge of the platform and barely missed falling into the water. Lucky thing; Matt didn't even want to think where a thing like that might wash up, or the trouble it might cause.

The other two raptors struck from the sides. One of the guards managed to take down the one on the left, but his companion on the right was a hair slower; the remaining Deinonychus landed on him and ripped him apart before Matt could so much as change his aim.

With the soldier's screams still ringing in his ears, Matt sprung to life and took down the last Deinonychus, catching it in a crossfire with the remaining guard. He hurried to the fallen soldier and took his pulse; much too late. Matt closed his eyes and looked all around, taking a moment to breathe, wondering how the hell many of those things might have come through the yet-to-be-located anomaly.

That was when he heard the echoing cry again, from another platform somewhere above him. He whirled, looked up, but he only caught a glimpse of that great, gleaming talon coming out of the darkness before the creature was upon him...

* * *

Abby tried to follow her own advice and be careful. She really thought she did.

Unfortunately, Tom Harper kept running ahead of her team, forcing them to run to keep pace, and there was really no way to run through a dark labyrinth _carefully_. At first Jenkins was in the lead, easily out-pacing the civilians, but then Tom doubled back suddenly and turned down a tunnel nearer to Connor and Abby, leaving their escort bringing up the rear.

"This way! It's not much further!"

Abby's brow furrowed-_ that almost seemed deliberate_- and unfortunately, her moment of hesitation cost her. Being in better shape overall, she'd been running a bit ahead of Connor, but when she slowed, he burst ahead of her, just a few metres behind Tom, and that was when it all snapped into place:

_Tom leads them through the tunnel, into a chamber of some sort. It's quite dark, and Abby's first hint of something amiss comes when she hears a rifle bolt clicking into place, somewhere ahead. She stops-_

_It's far too late. Someone shines a torch, and she realises they're surrounded by half a dozen men in military style uniforms. One of them- somehow, it's Rivera again- raises his weapon and fires at point-blank range. Connor falls backward, into her arms-_

She flashed back to reality. Tom was slowing up ahead, ducking into another chamber. Connor started to follow, but Abby crossed the distance between them in three strides so desperate they felt like flying, lowered her shoulder, and slammed into him, knocking Connor to the ground as Jenkins came running up behind them-

"No, don't!" she called, reaching out to him. "It's a-"

_Bang._

Jenkins staggered backward in almost comical imitation of the fall Connor had performed in Abby's vision; the bullet hole in his chest, however, was no laughing matter. Abby rolled away from Connor and stared into the darkness, unwilling to enter the chamber but unable to think of an escape plan...

"Trap," a familiar voice said from the dark. "It's a trap. Sorry, did I spoil the surprise?"

Torches shone, just as in her vision. It was indeed Major Rivera, or the very image of him, who stepped out of the waiting chamber, backed by half a dozen of Southfield's paramilitary soldiers.

Connor crawled past Abby and checked Jenkins' pulse, then shook his head. Abby looked away. _He saved our lives. That man_ saved our lives,_ just hours ago, and now these_ monsters _have..._

Wait, what had they done, exactly? Abby still didn't understand. She glared at Tom, who stood a little distance behind Major Rivera, looking haggard and worn, but much less afraid than before.

"I suppose you're not a sewer worker," she said.

"In this timeline, he was," Rivera supplied. "He's also dead. Luckily, we found a spare. As you can see, we found more than one. You'll have to be more flexible, Abby, if you expect to keep up with us."

A couple of the soldiers hurried forward; one took away Abby's EMD. Another disarmed Connor and hauled him to his feet. They shared a look.

"Have I mentioned," Connor said, "I have a really bad feeling about this?"

"You say that every time you watch Star Wars," Abby sighed.

Didn't make it untrue, though. As a matter of fact, Abby couldn't recall ever feeling worse about anything in her life...

* * *

Miles away and some metres above the tunnels, in the intensive-care unit of the best hospital in the city, a very pale young woman named Jess was hooked to a variety of life-support machines. A man sat at her bedside, holding her hand, talking to her without saying anything in particular. He had the same face as Matt Anderson, though not the same mind- an uncountable number of years spent in a time loop had taken their toll.

Perhaps because of this, or perhaps because he could no longer avoid the subject at hand, his aimless ramble turned suddenly serious, and his voice nearly broke a couple of times as he tried to get through the words:

"I doubt it's any consolation to you, but I come here every time. I always sit with you and talk to you like this. Sometimes you even wake up and I tell you it'll be okay. It won't be, but I feel better for having said it, and sometimes you feel better too. I have to come, Jess. I have to face the worst consequences of my decisions. You deserve that.

"My mistakes brought this on us. Sooner or later, I always come back to that. Maybe Connor could have been more careful and maybe Lester could have been more honest with us and maybe a million things would be better if I'd killed that bastard Newman the night I found him in the menagerie. But it's all beside the point, you see. You're _my_ responsibility. I couldn't protect you.

"I did try. I tried everything I could imagine. I tried to get Becker to drive you away. You'd hate me for that, but it would be better than this. I don't know why I can't make it any better than this..."

The future version of Matt suddenly realised he and Jess weren't alone in the room. A shadow fell across them, blending into the monstrous shadow of the bed with its life-support equipment. He turned; Emily Merchant stood over him, looking down with a strange mix of disillusionment and pity. He couldn't bear that look, so he turned away.

"The doctors say they've stabilised her for the moment, but her internal injuries are grave. They don't know if she'll survive." Emily took a deep breath before asking, "Do you?"

Matt shrugged. "Sometimes she does, for a while. Sometimes not. Flip a coin."

"Well, so long as you left her a coin flip's chance, that's all right, then!"

The dripping scorn in Emily's voice made her sound like a stranger; with the same determination as when he came to visit Jess, Matt made himself face it.

"It's not what it looks like!" he said. "I'm trying to reshape time itself-"

"Oh!" said Emily. "A madman's plan! Now I feel _much_ better!"

"You don't understand. If I succeed, this never will have happened! She'll never have been hurt at all! I know it sounds insane, but it's the only way now! As terrible as it is, this can _save_ her- and everyone else!"

Emily shook her head. "I wish I could believe you... but you did make a point of saving _me,_ didn't you? You must have been afraid of something."

"Yes," Matt said, "I'm afraid. I'm terrified. But I have done my duty, Emily, all of it and more. If you ever trusted me, trust in that."

Emily looked down at Jess, still frail as death. She crossed the room to the window and stared out at the city for several long moments. Matt wondered how strange it must look to her, this futuristic city. Like a miracle, most likely. The same way it had looked to him, all those years ago, when he'd stepped through an anomaly for the first time...

"What do you want from me, Matt?" she asked. "Do you want me to forgive you?"

"Yes," he said, "but not just for this."

"Oh, there's more? Lovely."

Feeling a million years old, the future Matt climbed to his feet, moved over beside Emily, and fished something out of his pocket. He held it up- to the eye, nothing more than a mobile phone.

"Do you know what this is?"

"Yes," said Emily, "Alexander Graham Bell. I'm not quite _that_ far behind the times any more."

"It's a trigger for the time loop. Connor built it to look like a mobile so it could be swapped in and out." Matt shook his head. "I can turn it off, you know. End all this. Go anywhere, any time."

Emily's eyes flashed. "And leave Jess like this? Leave Southfield in control, for good? Is that what you're saying?"

"That's the temptation. It gets stronger every time... just to have this over with. Good ending, bad... it doesn't matter, it would be _over._ People have to stop fighting sooner or later. They have to have something to fight _for_. It's been so long... I start to forget." He gathered himself. "The point is, I haven't used it. And I won't. I'll see this through."

Emily finally looked at him. Her eyes were full of tears. She touched his hand. "I believe you."

"You want to know why I called you back? Why I saved you, if it makes no difference? It's because I have to know. I always face my mistakes... but I've never had the courage to talk to you before. I've never let you see me like _this:_ at the end of my rope, half-mad. I've never had the courage to face you, knowing I've lost... whatever respect you had for me, whatever was between us."

"You haven't lost that," Emily said. "You couldn't."

He felt his hand shaking beneath hers. It had been so long since he'd felt even something so simple as a gentle touch... he took a long breath, and then the words came out in a rush.

"One more thing I haven't had the courage to do... and that's to tell you I love you."

"Matt..." she said.

"Suppose- just suppose I were to use this device. This time through the loop, or next time. Suppose I offered to take you with me, get away from all this, go some place safe, have a life. Suppose I said, after a thousand years stuck in time, the only thing I really want is you. What do you think you'd say to that?"

Emily squeezed his hand. The tears rolled down her cheeks. "I think I'd run away with you any time... precisely because you would never ask me that."

The future Matt drew in a shuddering breath, tried to ignore the broken feeling inside, just tried to keep on his feet until he could find it in himself to march onward.

"That's... more or less what I thought." He smiled at her, to show he understood. He knew he was a fool for even speaking such an idea aloud. But he consoled himself that he would never have gone through with it. Even after all he'd endured... it just wasn't who he was. Matt Anderson finished the mission. Always. No matter the cost.

Letting go of Emily's hand, he walked back to Jess, smoothed her hair, and kissed her on the forehead. "It'll be all right, darlin'. We're not defeated yet. I'll see you both again."

He met Emily's eyes a final time. She was crying openly. He squeezed his own eyes shut to hold back the tears. He'd cry when it was over. Lord knew he'd earned it.

He pressed a button on the trigger device. The warm, golden glow enveloped him, and then he was again falling through the spaces between time, clinging to the fabric of reality by his fingernails...

Always alone.

* * *

Another version of Matt, somewhat younger and quite a bit further from despair, was dealing with a sticky situation of his own. He'd barely rolled away from the final Deinonychus as it landed, but he'd dropped his EMD in the process, and now he stood at the end of the platform with his back to the water and the creature between him and the door.

The soldier who still lived had a weapon, but Matt didn't like his odds if they simply shot the creature. It took more than one shot to fell a predator like Deinonychus, and the creature was so close, he doubted the guard would get it before it got him.

The other man looked to him for guidance. The Deinonychus sized him up for a dinner plate. Matt found himself looking around the chamber aimlessly, hopelessly, dry of inspiration. If there were just some way he could get to the door...

The door. More specifically, above the door. Somehow, just above the doorway, someone had planted an explosive charge and detonator. Matt recognised it on sight, though he wasn't to understand it was one of Newman's leftover charges until some time later. At the moment, its existence was enough.

Matt turned to the guard with a grin. "Toss me your EMD and get ready to jump."

The other man frowned at him, but tossed over the weapon as ordered. The flicker of movement spooked the Deinonychus, which charged. Matt caught the weapon in the air, aimed, and...

_Some days I really hate this job..._

He fired a single bolt, which struck the detonator and set off the charge. Even as it exploded, he turned and stepped off the platform, landing in the foul-smelling water below as a gout of flame streaked through the chamber.

Matt surfaced alongside the guard, gasping for air, watching small fires burn themselves out all around as the charred remains of the final Deinonychus fell into the water with them. Matt choked and gagged, barely able to breathe...

"That," he said, "is without a doubt the _worst_ thing I have ever smelled..."

The guard laughed, and after a moment, Matt joined in. They'd solved, at least for the moment, the creature part of their task. If only the human element could be set right so easily...

* * *

Newman wasn't struggling particularly hard. He scuffled and made a show of it, but any resistance he offered was less than a token effort against Becker's relentless determination. He barely even clawed at Becker's wrists as the other man went about the business of strangling him...

"I can help you," he wheezed, a final attempt to produce words that might have been as painful as fighting. "I can tell you about..."

"The only information I want," Becker said, "is that Jess is all right. If you can't tell me that, we have nothing to discuss."

Jenny was still relegated to the background, trying her best to get through. "Becker, dammit, you know you can't do this!"

"What if it were your husband, Jenny?" he said, without looking back. "What if I had Helen Cutter here? Don't tell me you don't understand this!"

"Yes, I do. I understand," Jenny said quietly. Then, despite herself, she laughed. "You know, I keep wondering why I'm still here. Why the ARC could possibly need me, after all this time. I'd like to think there's something, some good reason to put up with all this madness.

"Now, I'm not a genius like Connor and I'm not a soldier like you or Matt and I'm not fearless like Abby. But I've got one thing no one else in the world has, and perhaps it's what we need right now. I trust Nick Cutter absolutely.

"I can't defend anything Newman has done, but if he's part Nick, if there's even a glimmer of the man I knew, he can help us. He'll do the right thing, I know it. I believe that, Becker. Like you'd believe in Jess.

"Maybe that's what I'm here to say."

For several long moments, Becker said nothing. She wasn't sure he'd heard her. He just stared at Newman. The other stared back, bleeding from the mouth and nose, beaten, content to die...

Becker slammed him against the wall and punched him again, breaking another rib for good measure. Then he stepped back and let Newman slide down the wall.

"If she dies," he said, "I'm coming back for the rest of you. Count on it."

Without even looking in Jenny's direction, he turned on his heel and went to call his guards back. Jenny knelt beside Newman and made sure he was still breathing- which he was, albeit with difficulty.

He shook his head. "Shouldn't have interfered. Would have been better... if he'd..."

"Oh, shut up," Jenny said. "I never listened to Nick, either."

He reached out and touched her arm. "I owe you my life..."

Jenny peered after Becker, whose manner still concerned her deeply. She exhaled the breath she'd been holding since the start of the fight. "If I were you, I'd be wishing very hard for Jess's recovery. You heard him; if the worst happens, I can't protect you. And I won't try."

Newman nodded, willing to leave it at that for the moment. Jenny tended his wounds as best she could, glad for the break in conversation. She really didn't know what else to say...

* * *

Connor Temple didn't wish for much. Well, that was a lie. He wished for a great many things, including a super-computer, a Ferrari, and a Playstation 4. But he could live without those things, for the moment, provided he got to keep living. But one thing he wanted- maybe the only thing he_ really_ wanted, just at the moment- was the chance to punch Major Rivera in the face.

This surprised Connor, who was anything but a violent man. His only scuffling happened in emergencies, against rampaging dinosaurs and the odd brainwashed future-clone. He preferred to think his way through problems, almost without exception. But he'd make an exception for Rivera.

It was something about the turncoat American's smug grin that did it, he decided. Or maybe it was the fact that Rivera had betrayed Danny, that he'd used Connor's reunion with his old friend for a chance to humiliate and hurt them both. Maybe it was the way he talked to Abby, or the fact that he'd just put a bullet in a very brave young man. Most likely, it was all those things. But especially the smugness.

"This is good," Rivera was saying, to prove the point. "Seeing you two under guard makes me happy. Now we can have a conversation- a _brief_ one."

"I thought you were here for Newman," Abby said. "Aren't you wasting time?"

"We'll tend to Newman," Rivera said. "He slipped the leash temporarily, but he's a known quantity, and we have something he needs. Meanwhile, it came to our attention you'd be chasing him, and... well. It's not every day you get to pay back the people who killed you."

"You're not gonna hold that against us?" Connor said. "It's not healthy to hold grudges..."

"Oh, this is much more than a grudge, Connor Temple." Rivera took a step forward. "I meant what I said in the ARC. More than anything in this world, I would dearly love to kill you."

"But what did I _do_?" Connor demanded, growing frustrated.

Rivera shook his head, as though the question itself proved his guilt. "It's what you didn't do. We are believers in Helen Cutter's original plan. Admittedly, she went a little mad at the end, but at first she was going to rewrite the world. Remember that?"

Connor frowned. He did seem to recall Cutter saying Helen had brought up that subject once. But then Stephen died, and nothing ever came of it. Half the time, Helen's goals were so twisted you couldn't understand what she _really_ wanted. Connor wasn't sure she'd known herself. If these people took her for some sort of prophet, that was...

Well, it was more than a little terrifying, not to mention insane.

Rivera did nothing to dispel his concerns. "Think about it. A world where every sickness, every war, every natural disaster can simply be... undone. You could have brought us to that world. Besides Helen, you're the only one who ever knew how to create an anomaly. You had the key to time itself, an incredible gift of knowledge. And what did you do with it? Court your little girlfriend? Play video games?"

"He's done more good than you ever will," Abby said, defending him. "And he's a good deal cleverer."

Rivera shook his head. "You should have been the one to save the human race, Connor. Instead, you left us in darkness."

"_Darkness_?" Connor laughed. "Is that what you call the natural progress of time? It's called _nature_! It's called_ life_! If you can't accept that, I feel sorry for you, but don't blame your troubles on me, mate. I've got my own."

"You're a waste of talent," Rivera sneered. "You _offend_ me. You should be wiped from history. The good news is, the day's at hand."

He raised his pistol, pointed between Connor's eyes. He wondered if this was it, the moment he'd been waiting for, the moment Matt's double warned them about. Abby thought so; she tried to get between him and Rivera, but a couple of soldiers held her back.

Connor smiled at her, to show it was all right. Then he looked at Rivera- looked him straight in the eye, the way he thought Cutter would have done. He thought back on his life and realised he had no regrets. He'd had amazing friends, been in love with the girl of his dreams, and seen _dinosaurs_. How many people could claim all that?

He smiled at Rivera. "I'm not afraid of you. You'd think I would be, but I'm not."

"Well, that's disappointing," said the major. "Can't have everything."

"No!" cried Abby, from somewhere very distant.

_Bang._

Connor didn't feel anything, at first. He'd seen that on television; sometimes the person who's shot doesn't feel the trauma all at once. He tensed, eyes shut tight, wishing the pain would go ahead and get it over with.

He opened one eye, then the other. He was still breathing, still upright on his feet. Major Rivera's pistol was on the ground, and he was clutching a bloody hand.

The next thing Connor heard: _Click-click._ A rifle chambering another round. That's when Becker stepped into the room, beside a dishevelled and angry-looking Matt, with the shadows of ARC soldiers looming behind them in the darkness.

"Sorry, Major," Matt said. "I think you'll have to wait a little longer."

"Let them go and back away slowly," said Becker. His rifle was aimed at Rivera's heart, if he had one. "Believe me, it's not the day to test us."

Rivera's soldiers looked to him for a cue; with some reluctance, he nodded. The soldiers released Abby and backed up against the wall as she and Connor joined the ARC team.

They stood there for a moment, across the room from each other, each sizing up the other for weaknesses, simmering with anger. Then Rivera, still cradling his wounded hand, managed a smile.

"Fair enough. We can be patient. But the day's still coming. We've seen it. Gonna be a great day, Connor- the day of your death. We've made such plans."

"Yeah," Connor said. Then, remembering that Abby was right- he was, in fact, the cleverest person in the conversation- he added as an afterthought, "What do you think _I've_ been doing?"

Before the Southfield team faded away in the now-familiar golden time travel effect, Connor had the satisfaction of seeing the grin slip from Major Rivera's face. Only for a moment, but that moment of paranoid disquiet was every bit as satisfying as the punch would have been. Until he turned and saw Abby looking at him the same way.

Connor turned away from her stare. He'd wanted to marry her for a long time, but he wasn't very good at recognising that_ his_ plans were now _their_ plans- and, in fact, his plans for dealing with Southfield weren't likely to gain her approval.

He'd always thought she would come to understand what he had to do. Now he understood she might well _hate_ him for it. The thought terrified him more than Major Rivera ever could...

* * *

Things happened quickly after that. They found and locked the underground anomaly, buried their dead, sent Newman back to the ARC in secret, and made arrangements through the Minister's office to hold him in their custody and obtain his help against Southfield before turning him over for his crimes.

One of the holding pens in the menagerie was hastily converted to a cell, and Newman was led inside in handcuffs while Jenny looked on. She still didn't really talk to him- she hadn't even begun to assimilate everything that had happened in twenty-four hours- but she thought he appreciated her compassion. Becker's guards, who'd been friends of the murdered Jenkins and the fellow lost to the Deinonychus attack in addition to loving Jess as everyone did, were not likely to be the best of company.

Their boss was as Jess's bedside much of the time. They all took turns with her, but Becker took every moment he could spare and a few he couldn't. Matt worried he wouldn't be able to pull it together in time for the fight they were facing, not that he didn't have more than enough worries to spare...

But he spent time with Jess, too. He went there in the evening, after showering and changing from his experience in the sewers, and found Emily sitting at her bedside. He started to greet her, but she gave him the strangest look and her eyes filled up with tears. Before Matt could think what to say to her, she got up from her chair and walked swiftly from the room, leaving him wondering what he could have done that was worse than all the troubles they had already...

Connor restored the ARC's basic systems in record time, though he insisted it would have been done twice as fast had Jess been available to help. The first thing he did with communications re-established was to place a call to Area 94 in Los Angeles, where he was gratified to find Duncan answering the coms, with an exasperated Sharon Clarke looking on in the background...

Abby took her turns with Jess, but also took to spending time alone, or with the creatures in the menagerie (Newman excepted). With Rex and the others, she felt almost like herself. In human company, she felt too much like a future widow in training. She kept wondering about the flash-forwards she'd experienced, thinking back on Connor's questions about her ring, though she didn't see how the two could possibly be related...

On the morning after the clash with Southfield, Matt and Becker approached the Hub to find James Lester talking to Jennifer Lewis-Miller. They seemed much more at ease now than before the trouble started, old friends who'd been through hell together rather than irascible colleagues.

"I suppose there'll be no keeping you here," Lester was saying. "I've made arrangements with your employers to..."

Jenny cleared her throat. "Actually, I believe I'd like to see this through. I think I have to, now."

Lester nodded to her, affected some annoyance at having his plans disrupted, but his gratitude and perhaps the hint of a smile were detectable underneath it all. He nodded to the others when they arrived, pleased to be able to avoid saying anything sentimental.

Becker stepped to Jenny's side and looked at her from the corner of his eye. In a murmur that didn't travel beyond the Hub, he said, "Thank you."

"Don't mention it."

"Well?" Lester prompted after a moment. "I trust you've brought us news?"

"Good news, we think," said Matt. "Our gamble's paid off. By using Connor's temporal scanning device and the records from yesterday, we were able to cross-reference a list of times and places Newman and Rivera have both been. We believe we've found a common thread, visited by both of them multiple times in the last few months. At the least, it's another important lab like Southfield. At best, it could be their home base."

"Where is it?" Jenny asked.

"The future," Matt said. "_My _future."

"You're certain it still exists?" Lester asked. "As I understood the plan during Convergence, you were _destroying _that future for good and all."

"That was the hope," the team leader agreed, "but with all this timeline stuff Southfield's involved in, apparently they've got a way back to it."

Lester absorbed all that and nodded. "Well... there's no place like home, eh?"

Matt's expression revealed his extreme disapproval of that old expression. But he nodded, resigned to the necessity of going back. That, after all, was the main thing Connor's time machine had been created for from the beginning.

"Wait," said Jenny, a step behind. "You intend going on the offensive? You want to... what, infiltrate their base and strike at them before they take another shot at us?"

Matt shared a look with Becker, a grim certainty in both their expressions. Then he turned to Jenny and nodded.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, that's exactly what I want. I want to know who these people are. I want to know why they've started a war. And then I want to win it."

Looking at the others around the Hub, Matt saw his sentiment echoed in Lester's and Becker's and even in Jenny's expressions. After everything that had happened, he wasn't sure they could stop Southfield's future from arriving... but they could definitely make those responsible wish they'd never thought of the idea. For the moment, maybe that was enough.

* * *

Connor stood in the doorway to the server room, trying not to look at the bloodstains on the walls and floor. The anomaly that had sent the predators after Jess was still present, although locked and beginning to fade, and after a while he just stared at it, lost in thought...

Someone touched his shoulder. Abby, who entered the room and looked at Connor to avoid the same things he didn't want to see. She tried a smile, though it wasn't very convincing.

"Penny for your thoughts."

"I was just thinking," Connor said, "about the first anomaly I ever saw. I was so happy, remember? I really thought I was gonna win the Nobel Prize."

"You will," Abby said. "Rivera was right about one thing: Nobody else could do what you've done."

"I couldn't care less any more." Connor closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing, slowly and steadily. "I'm so tired, Abby. I really am so tired. I think this must be how Cutter felt toward the end. Completely drained, just... waiting."

"Don't talk like that," Abby whispered.

"The only thing that still matters is protecting you and our friends. The rest... I could walk away from the rest tomorrow and never miss it."

He opened his eyes; Abby was staring at him differently now. He remembered how she'd looked that terrible day with the mer-creatures, when she'd asked whether he was really in love with her. They'd been interrupted then, and he remembered wishing for just a few more seconds to say all the things he didn't know how to put into words. No one was going to interrupt them now, but somehow or other, they were always running out of time...

This time, Abby spoke first. Just one word, but it said a lot.

"Okay."

Connor blinked. "Okay... what?"

"Okay. We'll see this through and I'll arrange something for the creatures. As soon as everyone's safe again, we'll leave. I'll get a job in a proper zoo, you can... teach or write software. Whatever you want. We'll walk away."

Connor couldn't help it; he'd never seen Abby more earnest in her life. That was why he started laughing.

"Don't laugh!" she said, grabbing his hands. "I'm serious!"

"I know you are, and I love you for it." Connor shook his head. "But it's never gonna happen, Abby. You know these..._ things_ always win in the end."

He glanced again at the anomaly, so small and insignificant now. He marvelled that he could address such venom at a force of nature, at something that had shown him such wonders... but he meant it. All of it and more. Jess was the final straw. He'd had all he could stand of adventures and everything that went along with them.

Almost everything. Abby might have been thinking along the same lines, because she suddenly hugged him.

"Now, listen to me," she said. "They're not getting us, all right? That's not how this story ends. I know you think you have some heroic obligation to follow after Cutter, but you _don't_, you just don't! You have an obligation to me now, remember? We're gonna have a life together. We're gonna have a_ family._ You'll see."

Connor smiled. "Sounds nice. _Really_ nice, actually. You know what? You're right. We'll be fine. I'm just worried about Jess. Now, come here..."

He took her in his arms. He was lying, of course- every word of comfort was a lie- but that was all right, because Abby knew it. He didn't believe her, either. So they held each other close, pretending to believe each other's lies, while the anomaly faded and precious time slipped away.

As for the people at Southfield, who hurt his friends and toyed with nature and stole his time with Abby, he almost pitied them. They hadn't the slightest idea what they'd started, and they wouldn't know until it was far too late.

The world was coming to an end, and Connor Temple was prepared.

**THE END**

___...of this story. The sixth series will conclude..._

_"__My name is Abigail Sarah Maitland-Temple, and this is my official report about the final mission of the ARC..."_

_"__We have to think about the survivors..."  
"There aren't going to _be ___any survivors!"_

_"__You can't put everything at risk- the timeline, the entire world- for the sake of love!"_

_"__I've failed you. I've failed them all..."_

_"__People don't always get the ending they deserve."  
"They do today."_

**Primeval 6.7: The Day That Wouldn't Dawn**

___...coming soon!_


End file.
